Budapest Part Three

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We’ve had another busy few days since the last blog post – we’ve hardly stopped!

Running low on gas because of the cold weather, we drove out one day to fill up and took the opportunity to visit Memento Park on the outskirts of the city. It’s another of those storage places for historic Soviet/Communist era statues which were removed post-1989 – rather like the one we recently visited in Sofia.

We took the tram to Margaret Island, but there wasn’t much to see there this time of year apart from the famous water tower. It’s clearly a very popular place in the summertime though.

We’ve visited the New York Café, which has now been restored to its former turn of the 20th century glory after years of neglect following WWII.

There are lots of so-called ruin bars in the Jewish quarter – these are pubs, clubs and restaurants which have been set up in the shells of crumbling buildings. We found an excellent one called Mazel Tov, serving delicious Middle Eastern food, and have been for lunch two days running!

No trip to Budapest would be complete without a trip to the thermal baths, so we went to the ones at the Gellért Hotel and had a lovely time soaking and relaxing in the famous Art Nouveau baths. It’s a great place for people watching too!

After a week of being the only van at the camp site, more have now been turning up, one of which had British plates. The owners were a lovely Aussie couple called Tim and Jess, and so we invited them over for drinks and spent an enjoyable evening chatting over a few glasses of wine.

We’ve been all around the Pest part of the city now, but have yet to cross over the Danube to properly explore Buda. Our daughter Clare will be flying out tomorrow to spend a few days with us, and so we’ll be exploring Buda with her. She’s timed her visit just right as the snow has now all melted, and the weather is forecast to get much warmer over the next few days.

Mike

Some of the Soviet-era statues and sculptures at Memento Park…

Water tower on Margaret Island
This looked like it was going to topple over
Parliament building from Margaret Bridge
Mural of the Time Magazine cover from Jan 1957 – painted in 2016 on the 60th anniversary of the revolution, to remember the Hungarian freedom fighters who sacrificed their lives
Another stolperstein…
… outside this house – Mihály would have walked through this doorway countless times
Typical Budapest apartment block from the turn of the 20th century – the front doorway like the one above opens into a courtyard like this one
The New York Café
Lamp posts outside the New York Café
Inside the New York Café
Very grand!
The New York Café’s signature chocolate cake
The Liszt Ferenc Academy of Music
Sculpture commemorating the famous Hungarian conductor Sir Georg Solti
The classy part of town…
The Mazel Tov ruin bar / restaurant
Inside the Mazel Tov, which has an excellent Middle Eastern menu – great food at a reasonable price
Inside the bath house
The Bálna building, which translates as ‘the whale’
More street art… in the Jewish Quarter, once home of the rag trade
Not sure what this one’s about…
Hungarian Ernő Rubik invented the Rubik’s cube

4 thoughts on “Budapest Part Three”

  1. Loving the street art and the new York cafe
    Do you have the Gasit system onboard? We’re considering having it installed. Is it easy to refill everywhere?

    • Hi Tina, we have Gaslow, but it works the same as GasIt. If you’re full-timing around Europe then we think it’s definitely worth it as you don’t have all the faff with the different bottle connectors when moving from country to country, and the gas is also cheaper. LPG is available pretty much everywhere, and we just fill up like we do with diesel. There’s a Lancs based mobile guy who installs Gasit, have a search on the Facebook groups.

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