VACATIONS FROM HOME: BUDAPEST MINIVAN TOUR WITH ANDREA MAKKAY

DAY ONE

We had hired Andrea Makkay, a local tour guide, for a full day tour of Budapest with a minivan and driver included in the price. We also hired Andrea for a second half-day walking tour the next day.

Here is a brief synopsis of what we saw our first day.

Parliament Building Budapest
from the Fisherman's Bastion

We were fortunate that we had the minivan and driver for our first day of touring this beautiful city. Until that morning we had been blessed with unseasonably warm weather and sunny skies, but the day was rainy, raw and blustery. Thankfully the driver had umbrellas for us whenever we stopped.

Gellert Hill

The first stop was Gellert Hill on the Buda side of the Danube. Named for a St. Gerard (Gellert in Hungarian), the poor fellow met his martyrdom in 1046 by being placed in a spiked barrel and rolled down the hill.

Liberty Statue

We parked near the Citadella, a kind of fortress, that was being renovated and sectioned off by fencing so we couldn't tour the grounds, although we did get a commanding view of the entirety of Budapest and the Danube. Andrea told us about the complicated history of occupations in Budapest of the Austrian-Habsburg dynasty and with the Nazis and then the Soviets after WWII.

Gellert Bath
interior

From afar we could see the Liberty Statue, erected by the Soviets in 1947 when it was called Liberation Statue. It is just one of a handful of Soviet-era statues left in place after the fall of Communism. The Liberty Statue is set on the pinnacle of the fortress, majestically holding above her head a palm leaf.

Gellert Bath
interior

Driving down the hill we took a winding route through an affluent neighborhood of beautiful residences and embassies and parked down by the Gellert Baths. Opened in 1918 this beautiful Art Nouveau bath is a part of the Hotel Gellert. We parked and Andrea walked us through the interior. Both the hotel and the baths are soon to be renovated so if you're going to visit make sure they are open.

GELLERT BATHS BUDAPEST

Memento Park

Andrea was pleased we had expressed interest in seeing Memento Park. It is a collection of Communist-era propaganda statuary and commemorative plaques of different events when Hungary was reluctantly a part of the USSR. After the demise of Communism and the withdrawal of Russian troops all the statues were taken down, but instead of destroying them they were put in this open-air park specifically set beyond the city limits of Budapest.

Memento Park
Budapest

Andrea, who grew up during the Soviet occupation, gleefully and sarcastically pointed out the many "liberation" statues and their gloomy history as we walked the three infinity-shaped paths which led to a blank wall, and an appropriate dead-end.

The weather complied and turned very rainy and windy and chilling and was perfect for revisiting this sad, dour period.

Memento Park, Budapest

There is a fee to enter the park, but there is also a free exhibition across the small road. In the Barracks photo and cinema exhibitions detail the events of the Hungarian 1956 revolution and the eventual fall of Communism in the late 1980s.

It is possible to take public transport to Memento Park, but it was a good use of the minivan, especially on this miserable afternoon.

MEMENTO PARK BUDAPEST

Castle Hill, Buda
Castle Hill, Budapest

The rain abated by the time we returned to Castle Hill in Buda, where we had lunch at the 21 Hungarian Kitchen. On a beautiful cobblestoned street glistened by the rain Janet and I shared a pate fois gras appetizer. Hungary is the world's second largest producer of fois gras, after France. We all had a traditional Hungarian dish of Chicken Paprikash with dumplings, and I had a glass of Ikon Cabernet Sauvignon from Hungary.

21 Maygar Vendeglo, Budapest

The Chicken Paprikash was rich and filling on this seasonably winter day. Here's a recipe.

Recipe for Chicken Paprikash

After lunch we toured the rest of Castle Hill on foot. We visited Matthias Church and Andrea spoke of the history and pointed out charming details we definitely would have missed had we just winged it on our own.

At the church I lit a votive candle for a recently deceased cousin who was Hungarian.

We lingered on the square outside Matthias Church and the Fisherman's Bastion. This vantage point gives a spectacular view of the beautiful Parliament Building just across the Danube River and is perhaps the most popular tourist stop in Budapest.

Fisherman's Bastion, Budapest

We did not go to the Buda Castle, and because we had the minivan we did not take the funicular that starts at the Chain Bridge, the first bridge that connected the separate cities of Buda and Pest.

Fishman's Bastion,
Budapest

And, we learned later from the History Channel's show, "Cities of the Underworld" S1E6 that the cave systems all throughout Budapest can be explored and that there is a unique attraction called Hospital in the Rock. It is a cave hospital under Castle Hill that also doubled as a fall-out shelter during the Cold War.

Our guide, Andrea Makkay, guides the show's host through the hospital. In an earlier blog entry there is a link to that episode.

HOSPITAL IN THE ROCK, BUDAPEST

There is also a small church in a cave just across from the Gellert Baths. Now open to the public for a nominal fee the Cave Church was sealed off by the Communists in the early 1950s until the late 80s. At the entrance is a statue of St. Stephen, who converted everyone to Catholicism, whether they wanted to or not when he ascended to the throne in 1000 A.D.