Pest
Pest is the city that contains the Parliament Building. Pest is the eastern, mostly flat part of Budapest, Hungary, comprising about two thirds of the city's territory. It is separated from Buda, the other part of Budapest, by the Danube River. Among its most notable parts are the Inner City, including the Hungarian Parliament, Heroes' Square and Andrássy Avenue.
We were berthed close to the covered market hall, a building dating from about 1897. The market offers a huge variety of stalls on three floors. The entrance gate has a neogothic touch. A distinctive architectural feature is the roof which was restored to have colourful Zsolnay tiling from Pécs. During the World Wars it was completely damaged and then closed for some years. Throughout the 1990s restoration works brought back the market to its ancient splendour. The Central Market Hall is one of the most popular tourist attractions of the city. Most of the stalls on the ground floor offer produce, meats, pastries, candies, spices, and spirits such as paprika, tokaji, túró rudi, and caviar. The second floor has mainly eateries and souvenirs. The basement contains butcher shops, fish market, and pickles. Not only do they have traditional cucumber pickles, but they also offer pickled cauliflower, cabbage, beets, tomatoes, and garlic.
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Hungarian Parliament Building
The Hungarian Parliament Building is the seat of the National Assembly of Hungary, one of Europe's oldest legislative buildings.
Budapest was united from three cities in 1873 and seven years later the Diet resolved to establish a new, representative Parliament Building, expressing the sovereignty of the nation. The building was planned to face the river. An international competition was held, and Imre Steindl emerged as the victor; the plans of two other competitors were later also realized in the form of the Ethnographic Museum and the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture, both of which face the Parliament Building.
Construction from the winning plan was started in 1885 and the building was completed in 1904. About 1000 people were involved in construction, during which 40 million bricks, half a million precious stones and 40 kilograms (88 lb) of gold were used. Since World War II the legislature became unicameral and today the government uses only a small portion of the building. During the communist regime a red star perched on the top of the dome, but was removed in 1990. Mátyás Szűrös declared the Hungarian Republic from the balcony facing Kossuth Lajos Square on 23 October 1989.
We had a private tour of the parliament building for the 20 of staying for the next leg of the cruise. Not surprisingly, we had full airport security in order to enter the building. Apart from the debating chamber, there was the imperial crown of Hungary on display with a constant guard
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Gerbeaud Cafe
We had coffee and cake here a few years ago, and I was keen to try it again. It is my idea of a central European cafe, with wood paneled walls and rich decoration around you .Nobody hurries you and you can enjoy the atmosphere. Cakes and iced coffee were delicious. I even stretched to a glass of sweet Hungarian Tokay to settle the digestion. Service was good
We had coffee and cakes at the New York Cafe as well, and between the two I prefer Gerbeaud. It is less of a tourist scrum than New York. Prices in both are very high, but the upkeep of these old buildings is enormous, and if you want to pay MacDonald prices, then you go to MacDonalds. This is expensive, but is value for money, and is something you will always remember. This is Central European cafe life at its best.
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New York Cafe
The New York Cafe is part of the history of Budapest and Hungarian literary life, once the official offices of the "Nyugat" magazine. The ceiling hosts the frescoes of Gusztav Mannheimer and Ferenc Eisenhut, dating back to the mid 1800s. Venetian lamp shades diffuse a soft light that reflects off the gold plated stuccoes of the tortile columns, creating a myriad of colours.
The New York Life Insurance Company assigned architect Alajos Hauszmann, to plan the company's hall building in Budapest. Hauszmann, with Flóris Korb and Kálmán Giergl, planned a four story eclectic palace, with a café on its ground floor. The building and the café opened on October 23, 1894. The statues and other ornaments on the front side of the building, as well as the ground floor café's 16 imposing devilish fauns, each one beside the café's sixteen windows, are the works of Károly Senyei. The building was nationalized during the communist era. After the collapse of socialism, the palace was bought by Italian Boscolo Hotels in 2001. The building was totally renovated, and reopened in 2006 as a 107-room luxury hotel, with the Café, also totally renovated, on its ground floor.
It evokes a strange mixuture of emotions in the customer today. Yes, it is a tourist trap. You pay high prices for coffee and cakes and have the privelige of queuing up at the door in a sort of holding pen to get an empty table. But the decor is stunning and the cakes are quite good too. Service is a bit off-hand, as the waiters have seen just too many tourists, of which you are one more.
We had to queue for about 10 minutes, the place is vast and tables become free quite regularly. Your order is taken quite quickly, but the bits do not arrive at the same time, and it takes a bit of serious arm waving to get your bill - in short the service is not good for these prices.
But the place is packed day after day, and whatever you think about the service or the prices, I think, like me, you will remember the lavish decor.
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Jewish Church
The Dohány Street Synagogue is the largest synagogue in Europe and one of the largest in the world. It seats 3,000 people and is a centre of Neolog Judaism. The Synagogue complex consists of the Great Synagogue, the Heroes' Temple, the graveyard, the Memorial and the Jewish Museum, which was built on the site on which Theodore Herzl's house of birth stood. Dohány Street itself, a leafy street in the city center, carries strong Holocaust connotations as it constituted the border of the Budapest Ghetto
It was only in the 1990s, following the return to democracy in Hungary, that renovations could begin. The three-year program of reconstruction was largely funded by a US$5 million donation from Hungarian Jewish American Estée Lauder and was completed in 1996.
In 1944, the Synagogue was part of the Jewish Ghetto and served as shelter for many hundreds. Over two thousand of those who died in the ghetto from hunger and cold during the winter 1944-1945 are buried in the courtyard of the synagogue. It is not customary to have a cemetery next to a synagogue, the establishment of the 3,000 m2 cemetery was the result of historical circumstances.
In 1944, as a part of the Eichmann-plan, 70,000 Jews were relocated to the Ghetto of Pest. Until January 18, 1945, when the Russians liberated the ghetto, around 8,000 to 10,000 people had died. Although some of the deceased were transferred to the Kozma Street Cemetery, 2,000 people were buried in the makeshift cemetery. In memory of those who had died, there is a memorial by the sculptor, Imre Varga, depicting a weeping willow with the names and tattoo numbers of the dead and disappeared, just behind the Synagogue, in the Raoul Wallenberg Holocaust Memorial Park.
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MS Treasures
Out with the old and in with the new.This was the last night of the first leg of our cruise. 20 of us stayed on, and 70 left to be replaced by 69 more the next morning
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Buda across the Danube
Looking across the Danube at Pest, is the commanding castle district of Buda. We walked past a small Smart Police car and a Trabant that had been restored
Here we went in to the Matthias Church, a large Roman Catholic church, in front of the Fisherman's Bastion at the heart of Buda's Castle District. According to church tradition, it was originally built in Romanesque style in 1015.The current building was constructed in the florid late Gothic style in the second half of the 14th century and was extensively restored in the late 19th century. It was the second largest church of medieval Buda and the seventh largest church of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom.
The Fisherman's Bastion is a terrace in neo-Gothic style situated around Matthias Church. It was designed and built between 1895 and 1902. Construction of the bastion destabilised the foundations of the neighbouring 13th century Dominican Church which had to be pulled down. Between 1947–48 there was a major restoration project after its near destruction during World War II. From the towers and the terrace a panoramic view exists of the Danube, Margaret Island, Pest to the east and the Gellért Hill, whose seven towers represent the seven Magyar tribes that settled in the Carpathian Basin in 896. The Bastion takes its name from the guild of fishermen that was responsible for defending this stretch of the city walls in the Middle Ages.
A bronze statue of Stephen I of Hungary mounted on a horse, erected in 1906, can be seen between the Bastion and the Matthias Church. The pedestal was made by Alajos Stróbl, based on the plans of Frigyes Schulek, in Neo-Romanesque style, with episodes illustrating the King's life.
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Lunch at Fortuna Restaurant
This appears to be a private set of rooms that Tauck take for cruise lunches. It is not actually a restaurant, and you enter by a discreet, non signed, door. The interior was sort of retro-gothic. We sat on long tables, and had a strange meal. Instead of serving one table then the next, they brought the food out by what had been ordered - hence some people had finished before others had started - the service was abysmal. The food was mediocre, and the setting nothing special. I could have skipped this lunch. Looking up Tripadvisor for it, Fortuna's normal restaurant seems known for bad service and mediocre food.
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