Night train to Bucarest, May 31st

We flew to Budapest from Baku - via Istanbul, a busy chaotic airport.

Our three days in Budapest were worth the trip. Visually the city is attractive with treelined streets lined with 19thC buildings - mostly 4 or 5 storeys high (the top floors are much less grand.

Just north of the city are the ruins of the Roman garrison of Aquincum on the Eastern border of the  empire and occupied for about 400 years. Marcus Aurelius, Hadrian and Septimus Severus were all here. The area of the ampitheatre is bigger than the Colisseum although there were never so many seats. There are the ruins of enormous public baths. The Soviets built a highway over the top of the ruins. It would have allowed easy access to Vienna during the cold war.  Even on the edge of the Roman Empire they Romans knew how to live the good life. 

  As to be expected, there are lots of Soviet era apartment blocks and some are being refurbished and becoming fashionable.

Refurbished Soviet era apartments

 

  Szentendre a very pretty village with high class souvenirs.

Visigrad has a large medieval citadel  and at Solomon's tower the local enthusiastic Knights of St  George were holding a mock medieval tournament which was great fun.

The bowmen were pretty accurate.

 Views over Budapest from Gellert Hill

The Lberty monument.

On Gellert Hill there is an huge bronze statue holding a feather of the legendary Turul bird. It was originally erected in 1946? to celebrate the victory over the Nazis by the Russian army, but the Russians stayed until 1989 and then the Cyrillic text was removed and the statue renamed Liberty.

 The Parliament building near the Danube in Gothic style is marginally and deliberately slightly bigger than Westminister.

Floodlit at night it is spectacular.

The recently restored church of St Matthew on Castle Hill.

Another view of the spectacular tiled roof.

Gustav Eiffel designed the Market hall

 Paprika everywhere but I bought cherries.

Some general street views showing the grand buildings. Tram No 2 which runs along the Danube is a good way to see the architecture.

Finally after walking and tramming around the city we dropped into a bar and found these characters playing cards,

We caught the night train to Bucarest, much easier to get aboard than flying, but the first class sleeper was not grand, however I slept well until the two lots of passport control in the middle of the night.