Budapest - Christmas Market St Stephen’s Square Dec 17, 2013

Budapest - Christmas Market St Stephen’s Square Dec 17, 2013

After our visit in and around the Hungarian Parliament (and Tesco) we headed back to the apartment to have dinner and relax. As I had been suffering from jet lag I started to get very tired around 5 pm and to avoid sleeping too early I decided that I needed to get out again. I also wanted to see the Christmas market at night time when the light would be much more visible. Notice I said “night” time when it was only 5 pm! After some coaxing I got Tita to come along with me, but there was no budging the kids. I cannot say that I blame them they had warmth and a good internet connection to play games on and they had done a bit of sightseeing that day anyway.

 

 

 

Off to the subway, I have said it before the subway system is pretty darn good here we never seem to have to wait for more than a minute or two for a subway car and the rides are something like $1.35!

 

We had been to the St Stephen’s Basilica before - on the first day - but had not actually checked out the Christmas market. I have to say that I am glad we came at “night” as the market takes on a much more interesting hue. With all the Christmas lights and the light from the booths it is a different atmosphere and I would say a more Christmassy one as well. 

 

 

    While we were walking around the square the chuch bell rang out the hour of 6 pm - I know I was up very late indeed- and then they started a light show on the Church itself.

 

 

   

Sadly I was in home and asleep well before 8 pm and yes I woke up well before 3 am! I am just hopeful that I am not hit by this once we back to the UAE. I am sure Makhaila Rumptz will more than happily keep me company if I cannot sleep.

 

Budapest - Hungarian Parliament Dec 17, 2013

Budapest - Hungarian Parliament

 

Well after the kids had a day off I figured it was time to get back into the action. Tita and I headed off to get subway tickets first thing in the morning and as luck  would have it the sex shop that we passed in the subway station was closed because I am guessing it was too early but who knows it could have been closed.  

 

The subway system here in Budapest is very nice and it is a mix of very old lines and very modern lines. We live near the oldest subway line in continental Europe- London has the eldest in the world- and the stations and the trains that vie them are quaint and clean. they even still use leather straps for hand rails!

While the Modern lines in the subway system are serviced by the latest subways. Also the platforms for the new subway system seem to be a kilometer underground- take a look at this escalator to the platform and this is about halfway down

    We ll we ended up at the Hungarian Parliament Building and got tickets. Unfortunately the 12:00 English tour was sold out so we had to wait for the 12:45 tour! Not a problem I decided to go and check out the “Shoes on the Danube”  It honors the Jews who were killed by fascist Arrow Cross militiamen in Budapest during World War II. They were ordered to take off their shoes, and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river and were carried away (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoes_on_the_Danube_Promenade )! Unfortunately due to the construction on the Hungarian Parliament Building the site was closed to foot traffic.

Ashley and I looking over the rail to the Shoes on the Danube Promenade

It is very sad and poignant considering our Jewish heritage! (The last part of our name “-tz” is Polish Jewish)

 

 

     Well as we had time to kill we started - I should rephrase that- I dragged my family around to see things. The first thing that we saw was a cool bridge with some stature on it.

No amount of searching on Google will reveal who or what this is.

Ashley and I posing at the Szabadság tér or Liberty Park

 

Then we headed off to Szabadság tér or Liberty Park that has a Soviet War Memorial. I find this strange that it is still intact after the fall of the Soviet Union.

 

 

I thought that most Hungarians were not big fans of the Soviets but it is a nice looking monument and it is a nice park as well with several beautiful buildings surrounding it as well.

It was not surprising to see a statue to Ronald Reagan leading into the same park. If anything I would expect a reversal in the prominence of the two moments  

Andrew and Ron

    Well we had some more time so we decided to stop off at a local bistro and have a glass of mulled wine. Ashley got wonderful cup of hot chocolate too.

 

    So after waiting almost an hour to get into the Hungarian Parliament Building we had to wait some more! YEAH! And the best part was they took us from the outdoor shelter and made us wait in the middle of the courtyard with freezing winds blowing up off the Danube! Gee thanks!

Once inside we had to pass a metal detector and were assigned our own English speaking tour guide and private guard!

Makes sense though as the Crown Jewels are part of the tour!

The Changing of the Guards protecting the Crown Jewels

This is the conference room of Hungarian Parliament but the real Hungarian Parliament is supposed to be the same.

 

 

 

     I thought that the tour was a bit short considering that it did cost $40 for a family of four but you all know how cheap I am! Oh and don’t tell my kids I said this as I will never hear the end of it! Once outside I tried to get some shots to show the fine craftsmanship that went into the building.

The original Hungarian Parliament Building was destroyed by more than 300 bombs during World War II so what you are seeing is a reconstruction of the building. They rebuilt it using the original plans and they have said they tried to source all the materials from Hungary!

 

In this last shot you will notice two flags. The flag on the right is the Hungarian national flag while the one on the Transylvania flag! Transylvania used to be a part of Hungary before World War I -  after World War I, Hungary lost 71% of its territory, 58% of its population, and 32% of ethnic Hungarians. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungary)

    After our trip we headed off to a new mall that was supposed to have a Tesco Hypermarket it in!  I do not know what they call a hyper-market in Europe but it was not what I would consider a large grocery store in the USA much less the UAE. BUT what it lacked in size it did make up for in some forms of selection. It did have an amazing selection of pork products. I have to say I wish I would have bought more! Also they had an amazing selection of beer and wines. And the prices were amazing. Since we are mulling the wine we drink we are looking for a tasty but not fancy wine. It makes no sense to get a fine wine only to put cloves, cinnamon sticks , apples, oranges , etc. and then heat it on a stove. But paying a $1 for a bottle of good semi-sweet wine and being happy with it make this another reason to vacation here.  

Let me state that again, I bought a bottle of wine for $1 and it was better than almost any of the wines I paid $10 to $20 for back in the UAE!

Budapest Castle Hill Fail Dec 16, 2013

Budapest Day 3

Well we started the day with the best of intentions and you know how that works out! We took the subway to the Vörösmarty tér which has a nice Christmas Market we visited on the first day but today we were just passing through.

We walked to the chain bridge. Ok we did not go straight to the bridge as I saw this building and I just wanted to get a picture of it so we got a bit sidetracked so what we are on vacation, Crikey!

After getting directions from the nice door man at Le Meridien we were off again to  our destination the Chain Bridge.

The Chain Bridge is the oldest bridge in Budapest and it is the first link between the Buda and Pest sides of the city. Yeah, I did not know either. It turns out we have been spending most of our tie on the Pest side of the river.

Eventhough the wind was ripping through us Andrew was a brave soul and stood for a picture overlooking the Danube

The Buda Castle

The Budapest Castle Hill Funicular or Budavári Sikló is a funicular railway that takes you up the hill to the Castle District. It was my original plan to take this up and then walk around the Castle District but it was closed for maintenance on the say we wanted to go. I checked on a wiki.travel and they said it was nto worth the price as you cna walkk down and dross the rialway ine and get better views that way.  

On the right of the picture you can see the Castle District Tunel that takes you through the hill. As far as I can tell it bypassesthe castel districk so it seems to be a misnomer.

As you can see the above picture there was no way in heck I was going to walk that and I was not going to even ask my wife and kids if they wanted to attempt it. So my plan for the day was kind of at a loss! But luckily I did see some interesting buildings on our way over on the Chain Bridge so I decided to investigate. - We will get up to the Castle District in a day or two but we will follow the route explained in http://wikitravel.org

My daughter posing with the Zero Kilometer Stone

The first building we saw on our walk along the Danube was the Calvinist Church

Then on to Felsővízivárosi Szent Anna-plébánia és templom- St. Anne's parish church

Well after all this excitement we decided to be totally lame and go home for the day. I was asleep by 4 pm. Well I took a nap at 4 pm then went to be at 6 pm. I know totally lame but these early nights are making me tired. I guess I my circadian rhythms are very tied to the light cycle and it is hard to break it.

Budapest City Park Dec 15, 2013

Well I  am getting over my get lag as I woke up at 3 am today! I figure I will be into this time zone two days before we go back to the UAE! No worries as school does not start back up right away after we get back.

     Yesterday we left the kids at the apartment to play on the internet as Andrew’s foot is in bad shape. I think i tis a result of the acne medicine that he is taking. His acne has gotten much better but he has some real trouble spots around his mouth and around his nails. His lips are really dry and always peeling, also the skin near his mouth is in really bad shape. The Dr gave him topical ointment that is a mixture of antibiotics and hydrocortisone and when he uses it 4 times a day his skin is fine but he forgets. As far as his nails are concerned I am making a guess that it is the medicine that is making them act up as he never had theses problems before. He gets it really bad in both his fingers and toes. the dermatologist has two  ingrown toenails but I cannot see that it is not related as some of his fingers are messed up as well. Sorry mom I figure you wanted to know how his acne treatment is going. On the plus side his face is looking great with I would say a 80% to 90% improvement in just a few months (3 months). I am sure he will be finished before he gets back to the states and the best news is that the treatment is about ⅓ the cost of doing it in the USA!

     We are dragging them out today; granted I am going to buy subway tickets. These are not as easy to find as you would think! But I did find a place to buy them yesterday. It means walking about a mile, which seems to be against the point of having a subway but whatever.

So Tita and I headed off to the Budapest City Park to see the sights. The walk up to the park was interesting as it goes through one of the major thoroughfares of Budapest with amazing buildings both in their original dilapidated state and re-gentrified

We ended up at Hero’s Square

 

To the right of Hero’s Square is the Kunsthalle, which I was told is the modern art museum.

It seems kind of ironic that the modern art museum would be in such a classical building.

Next to the museum they were having a small Christmas Fair, The domed structure (bouncy castle for Santa?) you could not enter and was sponsored by a discount retailer in Europe. I am guessing that they were packing gifts for less fortunate children.  

After we stopped in the modern art museum from some mulled wine a Rumba - run, tea, and spices, which was very good- we headed off to the city ice rink. The city ice rink is huge and has dedicated areas for different levels of ice skaters. As Tita is not an ice skater we decided to view the rink not participate.

The building that you see in the background was out next destination the Vajdahunyad Castle. Of course we stopped on the way to get some more mulled wine and a pretzel. The pretzel was sorely lacking.

Well after this we went to check out the Széchenyi Thermal Bath and get an idea of what you need to bring and what the cost were for entry. Granted I have now forgotten how much it cost, I think it was something like $10 to $20 a person if you bring your own towel. We will take the kids there as we have brought our bathing suits. I am thinking we can go at night time, which here starts at 4:30 pm, and hang out in the steaming baths at “night.”

Speaking of steaming baths on our way home we went by a steaming lake where they were having remote controlled boat races. it was kind of cool.

On the way home we hit a Chinese place for lunch! The food was plentiful and very good, much better than back in the UAE. the fun part was I started speaking the limited Chinese I remembered from Taiwan and the guy just assumed I knew Chinese like a real person. Tita and I did understand the point - he spoke Hungarian but not English.

 

We got home and hung out for a bit then I got bit with my usual cheap bug! I mean why pay $1.50 for a glass of mulled wine when you can get a bottle of wine and mull it yourself for almost the same price! Andrew joined me on this quest to the grocery store on the next block. I did find some cheap wine that was not to bad tasting and it was in a plastic bottle. Heck let’s be honest most times I buy wine in the UAE I end up using it as cooking wine and it cost almost 10 times the price.  Well it turns out that that grocery store did not sell the spices needed so I dropped Andrew off and set out for the larger store about a kilometer away. Truth be told I was also doing this so I would not go to bed too early. I left the apartment at 4;30 pm and it was as dark out as it was when we arrived at 1:30 am. Let me state that again, it was 4:30 pm when I left and it was as dark as it was going to get! Is this normal in Michigan? It has been a long time since we have lived north of the tropics but I do not remember this. At the store they did not have the individual spices but they did have a spice packet for mulled wine! I figure I will pick up several to take back to the UAE with me. And so we ended the evening - oh yeah it was like 5:30 pm- sipping mulled wine spiced with apples and oranges.

Budapest Fisrt Day Dec 14, 2013

Budapest Day one-ish

Jet lag as gotten the better of me so I am writing this at like 2 am on our “third” day here in budapest. I say “Third” as we left Dubai on at 9:45 PM on Friday the 13th! and we got into Budapest at 1 am on Saturday the 14tt oh. Oh the flight was not of the usual Dubai airport but of of the new, and lets be honest budget, airport. It was quite an experience going to the airport because it is kind of out in the middle of nowhere and you are thinking am I going to Abu Dhabi and even after the turn off you are asking yourself “Did I go the wrong way?” Well the airport itself is brand new (it just opened last month) and it is extremely small so there are no lines for anything. It is nice to be able to come to the airport and not have to deal with the normal hassles of travel. If we fly out of the new airport again I am going to go much later though as it literally took us 20 minutes to get to the gate - so much for arriving 2 hours before your flight.

 

    The people who own the apartment we are staying at arranged transportation for us once we arrived in country. And then they met us at the door of the apartment building to let us in and show us the few things we needed to know. The only issues so far is that the keys are pretty temperamental and it seems that Andrew has the power to open the door to the building and Tita has the skills necessary to open the door to the apartment.

Our apartment. Did I mention it was cold?

    First day around Budapest.

     The first thing we had to do was go and get breakfast. Luckily the apartment we are staying at is just down the street from a mall that has a supermarket (West End mall). The supermarket had a great selection and it seem to be the place for locals to pick up breakfast as we were by far the only people there. And if my math is correct it was super cheap as well. I am going back today to pick up breakfast again and I will let you know.

     After a hearty breakfast of some traditional Hungarian pastries (very tasty) we set off to explore some of the Christmas markets of Budapest.

Smaller Christmas market on the way

On the way - ranted the wrong way but hey- we found two interesting places. First we found the Opera House

And a Moulin Rouge

Well after some helpful directions from a local we finally made it to the Vorosmarty ter Christmas Market and while we were there it started to snow!!! This was the first snow we had seen since we left America in 2001 and possible the first snow that the kids will remember. Granted it was a light snow but still SNOW!

The Vorosmarty ter Christmas Market

David and Tita looking at some fine leather bags.

Some cool dried fruits for hanging around the house

Hungarian cake that is rolled and cooked over a fire- it kind of was like a cinnamon roll- will have to get one today to try it out

Don’t take our picture!

    We bought some handmade chocolate but sadly they were not so great!

After we had some mulled wine and wandered around the Vorosmarty ter Christmas Market we went down to see the Danube and headed over to the Hungarian Parliament Building but stopped at the Széchenyi István tér

as it was on the street going up to St Stephen’s Square. We will go to the Hungarian Parliament Building today as we are going to go across the Danube to see some sights (if I do not fall back asleep at 8 am).

    St Stephens Square has a smaller Christmas market that we did not explore much as  ile and we were all getting tired. But there was a real blacksmith there and he was making things out a real forge. Kind of cool- I know.

While at St Stephens Square we did visit St. Stephen’s Basilica. King Stephen was the founder of the Hungarian State. He died and was canonized on the 15th of August in 1038.

In St. Stephen's Basilica they house the right hand of St.Stephen which was found intact and ahs been highly esteemed by the nation ever since.

Saint Stephen’s Basilica

 

 

Saint Stephen’s right hand

     After this we decided to traipse back to the apartment and were intent on taking the subway back but alas the automated ticket machine was broken so we had to walk back. I feel bad for Andrew as his feet are messed up.

Well this wraps up our first day in Budapest which was also our second day and now I have had two cappuccinos so I am not going back to sleep anytime soon- did I mention our apartment has a espresso machine.