What a day! Budapest is an amazing city, I'm so glad we decided to come here. We started off around 10 on the Pest side and took the metro to the Parliament building. It was unbelievable - so big and ornate. Everything we read suggested to take the tour so we bought tickets for the 12:00 tour. Since we had some time to kill we walked over to Freedom Square and St. Stephen's Basilica. St Stephen's is Budapest's largest church and took over 50 years to build. They said no tickets were required to go in but before you can enter a priest is sitting at the entrance collecting mandatory "donations" of at least 250 forint (that is only about $1). It was well worth the "donation" because the inside was very different from other famous churches we have seen. It was mostly marble as opposed to stone and the inside had tons of gold decor. It was breathtaking. After leaving the church we made a quick stop at Starbucks and headed back to Parliament for the tour. The tour was definitely worth it! The guide spoke English, and although she had a thick accent we were able to pick up some really interesting facts. The building was built in 1902 and survived the war with minimal damage. In the center of the grand hall they had the Hungarian crown jewels of St. Stephen on display. It was pretty cool to see a huge gold crown in person! After seeing the jewels we moved to the Parliament hall, where they still have regular meetings. Dina, Kyle and I all said that if we ever had a meeting in a room like that we would be too busy looking around at the ornate paintings and sculptures on the walls and not pay a bit of attention. It was interesting, the oldest representative of parliament is 90, the youngest is 24 and less than 10% of the representatives are women. After finishing the tour we walked along the Danube to the Chain Bridge to walk to the Buda side of the city. The Chain Bridge is a huge suspension bridge that was built in 1849. It was the first link between Buda and Pest and it was apparently built because a famous Hungarian reformer was unable to cross the river due to storms and in that time his father passed away. The Buda side of the city is built up on a hill so once we crossed the bridge we took a cable car up to the Castle district. The Royal Palace was the first thing we saw. The original castle was completely destroyed during World War II so after the war a new castle was built and meant to mimic a medieval city. Again, it was incredibly detailed and ornate - it looked like it was built in the 1800s, not the 1950s. After taking some pictures and watching the changing of the guards, we wandered around the castle area a little more and saw the Hungarian National Gallery and Budapest History Museum. We skipped going in but the buildings were gorgeous. We then headed to Fishermen's Bastion, where there was another beautiful church along with breathtaking views of the Pest side, including the Parliament building. After taking a ton of pictures we were hungry and cold so we stopped in a little cafe and had a late lunch. We then took the metro back to the Pest side and stopped into our hotel to grab another layer. We got lucky and had pretty good weather (sunny and high 30's) but after being outside all day we were all a little cold and as it was getting dark it was getting significantly cooler. When we were at the bath's the last night we saw this huge castle in the distance so we decided to go check it out. Turns out it was on the edge of Heroes Square, which is the entrance to the City Park. There were huge statues of significant Hungarians in these big arches. It was all lit up because it was getting dark and looked really cool against the sky. As we were walking over to the castle on the edge of the park, we found the Hungarian National ice skating center - an outdoor ice sheet about as big as a football field. Unfortunately it wasn't open today, otherwise Dina and I would have grabbed our skate and gone out for a spin! The castle we saw turned out to be the Vajdahunyad Castle, which is a copy of a famous castle in Transylvania, Romania. It was built in 1896 out of cardboard and wood but became so popular they rebuilt it with stone and brick. It currently houses the agricultural museum. It was all lit up and looked so cool. After the castle we headed back to the hotel. Kyle wasn't feeling well so we just ordered dinner from the restaurant downstairs and figured out our plans for tomorrow.
We hit basically all the major sites of Budapest so tomorrow we are going to head to Vienna. We had been told you could take a boat along the Danube but apparently they only run from April-October so unfortunately we have to take the train. The train is only about 2 1/2 hours so we will get into Vienna around 1:30. We decided to stay at the Courtyard Marriott there as well as we have gotten used to our American style beds! Looking forward to exploring another new city tomorrow!
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