The Murky-Green Danube

Servus (Austrian German) and Szervusz (Hungarian) Everyone!

So it's been a few days since the last post. In that time we've been in a couple of the imperial cities on the (murky green - there's no way it could ever be described as "blue") Danube - Vienna and Budapest.

We had 3 nights in Vienna, and stayed with a friend of my (Mita) dad's from university. I don't think they've seen each other in 30 years! It was all rather short-notice, and they took very good care of us :)

Our Viennese friends - James and Deena

Our main activities in Vienna centred around the Hapsburgs. The palaces of the Hapsburg empire, the museums displaying their treasure, the Sisi museum (covering the life of the most famous Hapsburg queen Elisabeth [Sisi], whom Stu thought seemed more like a bit of a whiner than anything else!).

In the gardens of the Hapsburg summer palace.

Stu and one of the crown/sceptre/orbs of Austria.

At an old Viennese coffee house.

We drove on to Budapest next, arriving during some sort of festival, which included knights and horses and chariots racing around an arena set up at Hero's square. We couldn't get in (it was absolutely packed, I doubt we could've gotten tickets even if we could figure out where to get them). There also seemed to be an environmental-expo/excuse-to-have-stalls - all up the main shopping street starting from Hero's square. The road is quite long - about a half hour's walk - and they had closed off the entire thing to cars, and had stalls (both about energy conservation, and selling all sorts of other things) and stages the whole way down. At the end opposite Hero's square they had set up quite a long race track and were racing electric go-carts, complete with cheer leaders! (Not that Stu noticed...) Apparently there was also a chocolate festival on up at the castle, but we didn't find this out til the next day - just our luck! Up until mid-September is the time for festivals in Budapest - we just arrived for the last of them. The week before they had a beer festival, and before that the wine festival, and an organic foods festival.

Chariot racing - took the picture over the fence and through the crowd, so it's the best I could get!

Hungarian children dancing.

We also missed out on a few things we wanted to visit, because our only full day was a Monday, and lots of things are (of course!) closed on a Monday. The lady at the information desk who sold us a Budapest card (which amongst other things, lets us in to a few of the museums for free -except on Mondays) forgot to mention that detail... But never mind, we still saw a lot of the main sites, exploring Castle Hill on the Buda side, and all around about the Pest side of the river. We did a walking tour of Castle Hill (which we did use the Budapest card for), which was good :)

At Fishermen's Bastion up on Castle Hill.

In front of the largest parliament buildings in Europe (beating Westminister by 3m).

One evening, we did a night cruise on the Danube. It was pouring down with rain for most of it, so everything was rather blurry through the glass sides of the boat, but still pretty. And we braved the weather out the back of the boat a couple of times to get some beautiful views of the buildings, churches and castles all lit up (probably not a good environmental practice) on either side of the river.

Mattias' Church and Fishermens' Bastion

Parliament buildings.

Chain bridge and Buda palace.

We have moved on now to Prague, but since we've just got here (and already loving it!) we will leave that for the next blog!

Tschuss and Viszlat!

Mita and Stu :)