Castle Hill, 2, and Other Things

More from Castle Hill, Buda.

While near the Castle, we were passed by this Procession

Which ended in the ritual Shoot-out at the OK Corral
for tourists

But among those processing, there were these two
Hungarian bag-pipers; not wearing kilts, however

And these two cute kids, headed for a little folk
dance presentation, who obliged maybe a dozen
tourists  with their patient and good-natured poses

What better to do, when avoiding the actual Castle,
than to visit the Royal Wine House and Wine
Cellar Museum (in the Castle cellars)? Tasting notes:
the Egri Bikaver ("Bull's Blood") I had requested was
 replaced by some other unremarkable cab/merlot
blend; just OK; the sauvignon blanc was an
experience, fruity, and with 15% alcohol (yes, 15%,
highest I have seen on a white), and an interesting
"grassy" after-taste (where do we come up with these
 wine adjectives? did I go out and eat some grass
before the tasting? well, I am sure that as a kid I must
 have eaten, or tasted, some grass; anyway, some very
old neurons were firing in the after-taste; the Tokay was
wonderful, a sweet white dessert wine more like Sauterne
(ah, Bordeaux!) than the trockenbeereauslese, although
 it is picked, by hand, with the "noble rot"; usually, Vicki
 is a wonderful partner for tastings--I get to drink her
share as well as my own--but on this day she drank
most of the Tokay, giving me the cherry schnapps-like
 concoction she appraised as "ick!" Anyhow, this
 was all fun; I had never before tasted Hungarian wines

In the ex-Royal Cellars

And, a bus and tram-ride later, we are back in Pest,
admiring its St. Stephen's Basilica

And other buildings; Budapest too is a
City of Spires

The Castle from Pest

Castle Hill, 1

The next day we trammed and bussed over to Buda and its Castle Hill, which includes, duh, the Castle, as well as other monuments, and especially, fine views of the river and Pest.

Beautiful buildings, tiled roofs, all around

Fisherman's Bastion, a neo-Gothic structure high up,

affords great views

Pest

The Hungarian Parliament Buildings

The Danube, with Margaret Island; one of the world's great

rivers, 1800 miles from the Black Forest in Germany to the

Black Sea in Romania and the Ukraine; Europe's only

east-west river, a thoroughfare from the earliest human

times, one imagines

The Holy Trinity, i.e., Plague, Monument

Matthias Church, lots of renovation going on below; more

beautiful tiles above

As close as we got to the actual Castle

Another view of Pest

Eagle (dragon?) at the gate to the Castle environs

Memento Park

Another even longer tram and bus ride took us into the Buda hills and to Memento Park. After the fall of communism here, some enterprising souls gathered together what they could of the colossal communist monuments and statues and placed them all together in what is now called Memento Park. As with the Museum of Communism in Prague, this is all displayed with some humor, although the underlying story, especially of Hungarian resistance and rebellion, is tragic. But even the people who lived through it all seem able to laugh, a little, triumphantly now, at those years.

"Our founders" (this is socialist realism?)

Comrade Lenin

Alas, most of it is untitled

But speaks volumes

Must be thirty feet high

Vicki made me do this; I have leftist

sympathies, but not that left

"I am the Walrus"--Donnie, TBL

"Let's us Ruskies and Hungarians be pals, comrade"

Pretty well sums it up, machine gun and all

Esceri Piac

Esceri Piac must mean "street market" or somesuch.  But this is no mere flea market. We've seen a few recently. This one attracts antique dealers and has some wonderful stuff (as well as the usual flea market fare). It took us more than an hour on buses to get to it, right on the southern outskirts of Pest.

Entrance on a gray day; it's actually a large enclosed 
area, with some permanent stalls and shops, the rest 
on tables all over

A cimbalom

Stall interior

More

In one of the galleries

Interestingly, unlike Germany and Austria, there was a good bit of Nazi 
memorabilia for sale, reminders of how market- oriented Nazism was--they 
were continually producing trinkets and other items, covered with their 
symbols and slogans; the owners would not let me take pix of most of

it, but I did snatch a few

Presumably there's a black market for this stuff; one wouldn't want so much 
as to touch it, however

Big Indoor Market

At the end of Daci Utca is the Lszamu Vasarc Sarnok, which, we figure, means "big indoor market."

There it is

At first sight, outside, I thought it had to be the Budapest

train station; it is humongously huge, three floors

Much of what is sold is paprika

And other local goodies

Garlic for those contemplating a trip to Transylvania

Fun (in English, too)

As well as goose liver

Vaci Utca

We spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering around, as is our habit, first to a craft-market near the synagogue, then down toward Vaci Utca, one of the main pedesrtrian shopping areas.

Fixer-upper Art Deco

Nice Art Nouveau all around, although not as prominent as

in Prague

All kinds of nice buildings to look at

Vaci Utca; we have, at length, figured out that

utqa means street; ter means plaza or square;

fortunately, many people, especially younger

(as is always the case), speak pretty good

English

Which is good, since there is not so much as a phoneme in

the signage or spoken language we can understand

The central tour bus port in downtown Budapest

Looking across the Danube, the giant Liberty statue

Budapest Synagogue

Our first stop, in what is turning into a week in Budapest (it's a long story), was the Budapest Synagogue and Memorial in the Jewish Quarter.

Facade of the Budapest's Dohany St. Synagogue, built 
in mid-19th century, said to be Europe's largest

Interior; a beautiful place, not much defaced by the Germans

The style is Moorish Revival, but with many of the trappings of a Christian 
church...pulpits, organ, etc.

Dome

Vaulting

Definitely Moorish-looking

Silver tree memorial to Hungary's half a million Holocaust victims, in the 
synagogue courtyard; the tree was a gift of the American film actor Tony Curtis, 
whose father was among those murdered

Nearly 500,000 Hungarian Jews were deported and 
murdered in May-June, 1944

In the neighborhood; the philosopher Spinoza actually 
has a cafe named in his honor; he resided in Budapest 
for a time, evidently