Pest Tour & Castle District, Buda

Today we started our beautifully, sunny day with a quick breakfast then out to our walking tour of the Pest side of Budapest. We walked for 2.5 hours to see:

Elizabeth Square
Old Stock Exchange building by 2 fountains, 1 loved, 1 not!
St. Stephen's Basilica
Liberty Square
Danube Promenade where we could see the Buda side of Budapest with the Citadel and Castle District. Buda was originally where the Austrian leadership resided. The castles and churches were meant to show power and the Pest side was where all the trade happened on the Danube. There were no bridges across originally until they realized how lucrative the trading was.

Soviet Memorial with statues of Presidents Reagan and Bush to show the balance of power. It was a mass grave, but the remains had been moved to a cemetary. This had been the site of many protests

Parliament Building

Budapest has quite the history of conquering but then being conquered or occupied through the years. All of the beautiful castles, churches & buildings were destroyed so they rebuilt them. None of what we see is original.

Our guide gave us coupons for a free beer at a nearby restaurant which had the Langos, a Hungarian specialty. It is a sweet bread served with sour cream and cheese. It was delicious. We walked to see the "shoes on the Danube", a memorial with 60 bronzed shoes representing the Jewish people who were made to strip down on the edge of the river, 60 at a time, then shot and washed away in the river. It is a very depressed History. The last occupations were the German Nazis and then the Soviets.

We walked across the oldest bridge called the Chain Bridge to the Buda side. We walked up a lot of stairs to Castle Hill. We had great views of St. Stephen's Basilica and the Parliament in Pest. We saw Buda Castle, the National Gallery then over to Fisherman's Bastion and St. Mathias Church. We caught a bus then the metro back to the center near the Danube for dinner and finished our day with an evening Boat Cruise on the Danube River.Read more