Danube River trip by boat

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.