Budapest

After Bucharest, Budapest seemed perfect. Money has obviously been spent to repair and upkeep the monuments and buildings. The whole 3 days we were there I only saw one place in need of some construction. And that was the train station Budapest-Keleti, which happened to be under construction! While it was cold in Budapest, we enjoyed some museums (art gallery, army museum, hospital in the rock museum), a communist walking tour, and on our last night an opera at the Hungarian National Opera.

View from Castle hill in Buda over the Danube and through the fog to Pest

We stayed in an hostel/apartment in Pest and so walked across the Chain Bridge every day. The first day we were there it was quite foggy when we first went over to Buda. It turned out that the art gallery was closed for a day because of Easter (even though it was Wednesday...) but because of this we discovered the Matthias Church, and another example of the money spent on reconstruction and repairing the buildings. This isn't a great picture, but you can see the spectacular roof tiles, which have all been redone. Needless to say, we had to pay to go inside.

Matthias Church

Workers restoring the painted walls. We enjoyed watching them at work and seeing the small exhibit on the restoration work.

Lunch on castle hill, sitting on thrones :)

On the communist walking tour - the Russian war monument

One of the few buildings that shows any marks of the history Budapest has gone through. They brought us past it on the walking tour to point out all the bullet holes. Most buildings are like the pink one beside - with a newly refinished façade. 

Cold night walk to see the Chain Bridge

And walking down the river on the Buda side to look across at the parliament buildings

The next day we took the funicular up to castle hill

And took a trip on the trams to get back (having first walked down the hill)

Last evening in Budapest - seeing Tosca at the Hungarian National Opera. We even had seats in a box!

Next morning, about to get on the train to Linz, then transfer to Nürnberg