Budapest

Budapest by Boat and Bus… The Great River Series— Danube #8

/ Curt Mekemson / 33 Comments
Today, Peggy and I are going to feature a variety of photos we took as we wandered through Budapest by both boat and bus. Here we are looking toward the Liberty Bridge and Budapest’s classic Gellert Hotel from the Amadeus. The bridge connects the Buda side of the Danube River with the Pest side. The hotel is presently being remodeled by the Mandarin Oriental Hotel chain with plans to reopen it in 2027 as the Mandarin Oriental Gellert Hotel. That seems a like a strange name for a historic hotel in Budapest, but no stranger than one being named the Hilton. Or something like Trump Tower.
Looking at the Gellert Hotel from the front.
The hotel is named after St. Gellert. He was passing through Budapest as an abbot from Venice in the 11th Century on his way to the Holy Land when King Stephens asked him to stay for awhile to educate his son and help convert the pagan Magyars to Christianity, which he did. At least until after Stephens died and a rebel group of Magyars decided they preferred their paganism. Gellert was shoved into a barrel, nails were driven into it, and he was rolled off the mountain and into the Danube, thus gaining instant sainthood.
The Liberty statue, which represent freedom from Communist rule, stands on top of Gellert Hill.
The monument is presently under renovation. I thought that the scaffolding created a unique, almost artistic look. Hungary’s flag is on the right.
Another view of our boat. The cold, cloudy, fall day explains the lack of people on the sundeck.
It didn’t deter Peggy’s brother John and his wife Frances from having their photo taken on the deck, however. Sunshine was teasing us by lighting up buildings in the background.
We took a photo encourage it.
We’ve already included several pictures from Fisherman’s Bastion in our previous two posts, but here are a couple more we liked. An early morning view of the Pest side of the river complete with a ferris wheel.
Later, the sun allowed us the catch colorful roofs beneath the Fisherman’s Bastion on the Buda side of the river.
Our trip to and from Hero’s Square (featured in our last post) allowed us to see several other buildings that caught our attention. This happens to be Budapest’s Great Synagogue. As always, taking pictures from a moving bus is tricky! Trees, power lines, and even windows get in the way, not to mention odd angles. But what the heck, such obstacles just makes the photo more interesting and more real.
A slightly better photo. The Great Synagogue earns its name. It is the largest synagogue in Europe and has one room that can hold 3,000 people. The building suffered severe damage under Nazi and Communist rule. It was renovated in the 1990s with a $5 million contribution from the Hungarian government and a $20 million dollar gift from the Jewish Americans Tony Curtis and Estee Lauder.
A random building photo from the bus’s window.
The Comedy Theater of Budapest provided another opportunity for a bus window shot. We took a lot more photos like this (there is a reason why my photo library is now at 97,919 pictures— grin), but now it’s time for us to return to the Amadeus for an evening tour of Budapest.
Taking photos from a moving bus is a piece of cake compared to night photography without a tripod on a moving boat. I’ll just label this one art. It’s Buda Palace.
We were actually able to catch a good photo of Buda Palace so I will quit while I am ahead and use it to wrap up our three blogs on Budapest. Next up on our Danube River trip: A lesson on how to persuade a horse to sit.

Budapest: The Parliament Building, Buda Castle, and Hero’s Square… Great River Series— Danube 8

/ Curt Mekemson / 34 Comments

Good morning and Happy New Year everyone. Here’s hoping you had a great holiday with family and friends. Peggy and I enjoyed our family time and consumed far too many calories. Now it’s back to work, so to speak. There are blogs to write, trips to plan, and left over holiday goodies to eat. Peggy just tempted me with one of our daughter’s brownies. My resistance was zero. I followed it with a second.

I’m starting today with where I left off before Christmas. The photo above is of the Hungary/Budapest Parliament Building, which happens to be one of the most popular destinations for visitors to Budapest. For good reason. It’s one of the most beautiful buildings in the city. This photo was taken when we arrived in Budapest and were still on the Danube. The early morning light was responsible for its fuzzy, ethereal, greenish-blue look.

An early morning view from the Danube River of our arrival in the Budapest. Shortly after docking, we journeyed up to Matthias Church where we had great views from the Fisherman’s Bastion overlooking the Parliament Building.

By the time we finished visiting Matthias’s Church, the sun was beginning to light up the Parliament Building. Unfortunately, a church steeple was busy photo bombing us, making it impossible to get a clear shot of the whole building.

We were able to minimize the steeple but our best solution was to photograph the building by sections.

The Parliament Building was inaugurated in 1896 in recognition of of the nation’s 1,000th anniversary and the 1873 uniting of three cities: Buda, Pest, and Obuda. Forty million bricks went into its construction, or so they say. Whatever, it was a lot of bricks. Approximately half of the building is used for today’s Hungarian unicameral legislature, while the other half is used for a variety of purposes including offices, conferences, ceremonies— and tours. If you feel the building bears a strong resemblance to Britain’s Westminster Place, you’d be right. Hungary wanted to emphasize its close relationship to Western Europe and England at the time.

Buda Palace, once the home of kings, provided another early morning view from the Danube River. Originally dating back to 1265 and later destroyed, much of what you see above was built in the mid 1700s. That, in turn was severely damaged during WW II and then rebuilt during the Communist era. The buildings in front add a nice dash of color.

A closer look.

Our favorite view of the palace. Like Matthias Church and the Fisherman’s Bastion, Buda Palace is located on Castle Hill.

Our drive into Pest from Matthias Church provided a final view of the Palace. Shortly after this, we were crossing one of the bridges across the Danube and on our way to Hero’s Square, which, in addition to providing recognition for a number of Hungary’s heroes, also features an art museum and a castle.

Our first view was the Palace of Art. We didn’t have to guess which building it was. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to explore it. One of the disadvantages of most organized tours is that there is rarely time for any more that a cursory exploration of what you are seeing.

On the other hand, many of the things we see don’t require a lot of time. For example, this monument representing the seven Magyar chieftains who led the Hungarian people into the Carpathian Basin in 896 was hidden behind scaffolding.

I found the two matching colonnades behind the Magyar Chieftains to be of more interest. The figures on top represented important aspects of Hungarian life and virtues. The bottom statues were of important historical figures.

Here, the man with the scythe and the woman sowing seeds represented labor and wealth. As to why a man would choose to go out into a field of grain and whip around a large, sharp object while being totally naked is a total mystery to me.

That this represents war makes more sense. But wait! His whip is a large snake. Various coats of arm and the ever present naked cherubs are on the pedestal.

Facing war on the opposite colonnade is Peace with a palm frond and a billowing robe. We missed Wisdom and Glory. Darn.

There were too many statues of Hungarian nobility and heroes to include in this post so I chose Gabriel Bethlem to represent them. He’s up there because he concluded an important treaty with Bohemia for Hungary. I didn’t choose him for that, however. I chose him for his mustache and hat.

I couldn’t resist.

Vajdahunyad Castle is located in the City Park of Budapest just behind Heroes’ Square. It certainly looks like one of the historical castles we’ve featured from time to time in our posts. But looks can be deceiving, right? Originally it was made of cardboard and wood as part of the 1896 Millennium Celebration of the foundation of Hungary. It was so popular however, the stick and cardboard castle was torn down and replaced with real stones. It was designed to feature elements of several prominent castles from the region and illustrates Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque styles.

Two more views. This one…

And this, which concludes today’s post. Next we will be featuring miscellaneous photographs we took while exploring Budapest by bus and river boat.

A night shot of Buda Palace taken while on an evening cruise.

Welcome to Budapest, Hungary: Matthias Church… Great River Series— Danube # 7

/ Curt Mekemson / 22 Comments
The sun wasn’t yet up when we arrived in Budapest. The captain of our riverboat had urged the evening before that we get up early so we could see the city in the early morning light. It was a good suggestion. There will be several photos in our posts on Budapest that will reflect what we saw. Here, we are looking toward Buda Castle Hill. The twin towers of St. Anne’s Church are on the right. Looking up the hill to the left is the beautiful Matthias Church that we will visit in today’s post.
Focusing in on Matthias Church a few minutes later, the sun was lighting the sky quickly. I thought the slightly fuzzy quality our cameras produced in the low light added to the beauty.
Then my camera decided to focus on the light behind the church, leaving it with a dark outline. It wasn’t what I was trying to accomplish, but I liked the result. The striking Matthias Bell Tower and a number of other towers stand out.
Matthias Church caught under blue skies in bright sunshine. While the style is Gothic, the brightly covered roof speaks to a late 19th Century makeover, as does the inside of the church. The green guy on his green horse is the much revered first king of Hungary, King Stephen. We took the photo from what is known as Fisherman’s Bastion, another prominent landmark of Budapest.
The King with his saintly halo and double cross is blessing the church. The towers are part of Fisherman’s Bastion. There are seven in total, representing the the seven chieftains of the Hungarian tribes that crossed the Carpathian Mountains and entered the Carpathian Basin in 895 CE (Common Era).
Born a pagan but baptized as a Christian, St. Stephen was coronated on Christmas Day in 1000 CE and immediately set out to Christianize Hungary. Thus, his Sainthood.

A true mark of a Catholic Saint during the Middle Ages, BTW, was that the faithful collected bits and pieces of you as relics to be worshipped. Praying over them could cure you of whatever, they thought. King Stephen donated his “naturally mummified” right hand to the cause when his tomb was opened in 1083 CE. I assume it was chopped off. He didn’t complain. It is one of Hungary’s most cherished relics. When the Ottoman Turks captured and occupied Budapest from 1541 to 1699, the hand was sent to Ragusa (Dubrovnik) for safe keeping where it was guarded by Dominican friars. They were reluctant to return it afterward. Lots of pilgrims generated revenue. They finally relented when Queen Maria Theresa promised to protect the city from a pending Russian invasion.
Speaking of the invasion by the Ottomans, they actually took over Matthias Church and turned it into a mosque. I was wondering if the moon and star (upper center left), which are both symbols of Islam and are often found on top of mosques, commemorated their occupation? Also, of interest, is the raven seen in the upper right center…
Legend has it that Matthias’ mother sent a raven to Prague with the ring urging her son to return home. King Matthias is another of Hungary’s loved rulers. He was said to travel around in disguise to get a feel for the life of his subjects, “doing justice to the poor, and shaming the powerful and arrogant.” He incorporated the raven into his coat of arms and put one on top of the church with a symbolic ring. He was known as the Raven King.
The church really is beautiful…
And impressive.
A final view before heading inside.
The warm brown and gold colors found on the main altar of Matthias Church are found throughout the church.
I really liked the way Mary was designed to allow light from the stained glass windows to flow around her. This attention to detail was found throughout the church.
Another example. Both unity and depth are achieved here. Also, do you see the lights hanging across the arch?
Light was used throughout the church for emphasis.
I liked this painting. It showed a stag doing what stags do— eat grass— while the ‘Lamb of God’ looks on.
Several large paintings are incorporated into the church. This is Francis of Assisi encouraging the baby Jesus to walk to him.
This mural depicting St./King Laszlo was even more richly painted than that of St. Francis. The bird headed people in the left corner seem rather strange.
The King/Saint Laszlo with piercing, scary eyes was ensconced in an nook below the mural.
My favorite: The pillars of the church!
Outside the church we snapped a photo of the the Holy Trinity Statue that was built to protect the people of Buda from the Black Plagues that devastated Europe between 1691 and 1709, causing the death of up to 50% of Europe’s population. The Holy Trinity tops the column. Cherubs and angels are next, and various saints are on the bottom. Remember how we noted in Vienna that St. Sebastian was always depicted with arrows sticking out of him? Look to the left. They even sculpted the tree he was supposedly tied to.
Here’s the Holy Trinity. The Holy Ghost hovers above as a dove with light emanating from it, God with his flowing beard is next, and Jesus is carrying his cross. A fat little cherub is on the lower right because fat little cherubs apparently like to hang around the powers that be.
After our tour we were given some time to hike the walkway on Fisherman’s Bastion with its great views of Budapest.
One of the views was of St. Anne’s Church with its Italian baroque tower that we had first seen from the river in today’s top photo.
Another was of Hungary’s Parliament building which will be one of the sights featured in our next post.

That does it for now. We’ll be taking a couple of weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s but I will get a brief post up just before Christmas. Beyond that, see you in 2025. Have a great holiday!