Budapest Day Three

This is where things get interesting as on day three we decided to stay on the eastern side of the city in Pest, to see what we could find.

Although you won’t realise this if you confine yourself to the tourist hotspot of Buda, this city is a little bit threadbare. Although efforts have been made to renovate some of the buildings on this side of the river, many of them are run down and occasionally even in a state of collapse. The city’s seedier side shows here, with many of the local denizens sleeping in shop doorways – Budapest has the highest rate of alcholism in the EU after Ireland, which probably explains the incredibly high price of spirits. Even at the airport a 750ml bottle of vodka works out to about £15. Stick to beer and wine if you’re even mildly budget conscious would be my tip, and perhaps keep a few coins in your pockets for the down and outs that you’ll find all over this part of town.

Pest does manage some grandeur however – it is after all home to the Parliament building, which makes Pugin’s masterpiece on the Thames look like a distinctly amateur effort in comparison! Outside the Parliament building there is a poignant tribute to the failed uprising against the communists in 1956 in the form of a broken marble column. Sitting right below it was the explanation to the mass of Union Jacks that we had seen on our journey into the city on Friday – our own Prince Charles had been here just the day before, and had left a fitting tribute at the monument. There’s a very moving sculpture that remembers the fate of the City’s wartime Jewish population on the riverside near the Parliament too…

On this side of the river you will also find the Basilica of St Stephen, the City’s largest church, and the Milinary Monument located in Heroes Square, where all the major figures from Hungary’s religious and royal past are on display, including one of their most celebrated heroes, Arpad. There’s another charming castle to visit too, Vajdahunyad, in the centre of the City Park, which has the mysterious figure of ‘Anonymous’ sitting in its grounds – anonymous because this is a statue of the unknown chronicler who recorded much of the country’s early history – writers touch his pen to gain inspiration, and this blogger was no exception to the rule!

There are also some leisure activities to be had in this part of the city, with its most spectacular spa, Szechenyi, to be found here, as well as the Funfair Park (whose purpose I’m sure I don’t need to explain)

From Pest March 2010

Just in closing I must tip you off to our great culinary find later in the evening – the Karolyi restaurant, which can be found in the courtyard of one of the old palaces in Pest. We had a really satisfying dining experience here, and were the butt of a well-intended joke. One of our friends insisted that they could only manage one bowl of soup, and minutes later the head waiter presented him with a huge tureen of liquid that was almost full to the brim. He kept returning with a smirk on his face to check that it was being completely drained – given that we all helped to polish it off I have to say that game sausage, tomato and smoked paprika makes for a really spectacular soup