Bianca Trips: Vienna to Gyor and Budapest

We left Vienna around 9am to travel to Budapest via Gyor.

I was very happy to manage to get a photo of the Art Nouveau buildings I'd admired the previous day through the bus window.

Our last stop in Austria was at the Hundertwasser House and Village in the outskirts of Vienna. Very colourful. I have a photo of another of his works in my New Zealand album - it's a toilet block :-). This, though, is an apartment complex and a little set of shops and cafes etc across the road from it:

Our next stop was at the Hungarian Border - or rather, ex-border. It's no longer patrolled or manned, but the ugly little booths like they were at the East German border back in the day, still remain:

We stopped for a little walk around the historic town of Gyor and a lunch in the town square. It was already lovely and warm here, with lots of sunshine. Very nice after cold Vienna. The meals here were certainly cheaper and better than what I'd had in Vienna. While we were having lunch, kids were playing in the fountain in the square. It was quite hot enough and it certainly looked appealing!

Frank and Thomas, as well as Tamas (our guide) had some sort of ice cream dessert. It was enormous! It tasted really good according to Frank, and was also quite reasonably priced:

After lunch, we wandered around a bit more,

heading for the church with a special miraculous painting (surrounded by gold below). It wasn't only the painting that was special though. The ceilings and walls were also painted and looked very nice:

Then it was time to head back to where the bus was picking us up, past this pretty baroque church:

Budapest is actually two cities: Buda and Pest. These were joined together into one city at some stage. The cities are divided by the Danube river which features a lot in pictures you see of the city, but of course joined again by all the bridges. Buda (the oldest part) where the castle and Fishermens Bastion etc are situated is quite hilly, whereas the newer Pest side is the business centre and also very flat.

We had a little time after arrival at our hotel (Radisson Blu Beke Hotel - notable for its free WIFI and lovely art nouveau decor) before dinner, so we (Frank and Bridget and I) went for a walk around together. Our first photo stop was the West Station designed by Eiffel (of Eiffel tower fame):

We walked in the direction of Parliament House, past some impressive buildings:

including the Ethnographic Museum directly across from the Parliament:

til we arrived at the Parliament Building itself, which was really amazing. Because it's made of limestone and is protected, it needs to be constantly repaired and renovated. This means there's scaffolding on it somewhere all the time:

We walked as far down towards the river as we could after walking around Parliament House, to get some good views of the other side:

before walking back to the hotel. Some of the buildings we encountered along the way were badly in need of repair, while their neighbours had obviously been recently renovated:

$Garibaldi Street, Budapest\$

Szabadsag Square was very pretty, surrounded by some lovely buildings. One side was fenced off and had security installed. At first we thought it was because there was some renovation work going on, but then we realised it was the U.S.A. embassy (big sign: no photos)

We continued on towards the hotel:

Dinner was around 6.30pm and included in the tour) and pretty nice. Certainly nicer than the Vienna dinner!

After dinner, we headed off towards our optional tour. There was a bit of after-dinner excitement along the way, in the form of an arrest going down:

We then did a tour on the Danube (this cost about $A23). This was around 9pm, so the lights were already on and the city looked absolutely gorgeous lit up: