City of two halves.
After breakfast we head North East up to one of the main railway stations, the Eastern. It's a giant edifice built in the 1880s and features statues of James Watt and George Stephenson on its main facade. Beyond it is a huge sports arena complex with some built, others not yet completed. This may be related to the now withdrawn bit for the 2024 Olympics, but I don't really know.
Both are just ‘en route’ to our first port of call - the 'Memorial to the 1956 Revolution' which is a brilliant wedge of metal, starting with random upright iron bars, steadily getting closer together and higher at the same time, until it metamorphoses into bright steel and finally stainless steel. It was built in 2006 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the uprising.
We then head towards the park, past the Fina World Championships that are going on all around the park, and towards the castle. We get distracted near the castle where a music festival is taking place and enjoy a short Bach recital by an excellent organist, emulating the famous Cavaillé-Coll organ in the Paris Opera House. Afterwards we explore other areas of the park, particularly the entrance of the enormous baths, with it’s various zones - mud, hot, cold, carbon acid (no idea) and more traditional pools, although we didn’t go in - the full ticket was €99 each and anyway, no cozzies! Further on was the zoo but we didn’t venture in there either.
By then it was back to Hero’s Square having done the full circuit, and our excursion is to walk down Andrássy út, which reaches from Hero’s Square two miles right back to the Chain Bridge. It’s wide design with service roads and lined with trees epitomises the magnificence of 1870s building, once again reminding one of Paris, where many embassies can now be found (we spotted Norway, South Korea, Turkey, Finland and Bulgaria.) Nearer the river the district becomes more cafe orientated, especial in the area surrounding the beautiful Opera House, which sadly was closed for tours today Still we enjoyed a Caesar and Goulash in the opera cafe before moving on. We diverted across to view the Synagogue, second largest in the world apparently with seating for 3000, before heading back to relax a while and change for dinner.
Tonight's dinner is going to be Russian since we found good recommendations on various sites. The only down-side is the location - 3 miles away on the other side of the Castle area. Of course we don't do taxis or public transport preferring to walk everywhere but it's still 33 and humid, so we set off in plenty of time to do the leisurely stroll and manage to find Mojitos on the way!
Arany Kaviar is in another embassy area and we pass several before arriving - the open sided dining room looks out into the garden and the balmy evening is delightful. Our Russian dinner is a great success although the first few courses were rather quick so I mentioned this, after that chef decided to punish us by providing extra-long pauses between the remaining courses, but we don't mind, the six occupants of the table in front of us provided excellent entertainment for the evening!
As we walk back we reflect on the extremes here - more vagrancy than we've seen anywhere in years, poor citizens going about their daily life, magnificent buildings both run down and sumptuously renovated, thrift shops and designer streets side-by-side and kebab shops galore nearby fine restaurants producing some amazingly good food. I would say it's got more than a passing parallel with Bangkok.
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