BUDAPEST

We spent the 4th of July long weekend in Budapest, another wonderful , old and historic European city. It is on both sides of the Danube river, once hilly Buda to the south and flat Pest to the North, not joined by a bridge until 1850...can you believe it? And here is the Chain Bridge, that first one, now restored after being destroyed during the second world war.

And here we are on the south bank with the Parliament building behind us. Second only to the English Parliament in London, it is big and spectacular. Our weekend was sunny, cloudy and rainy at times, but we managed to walk our socks off each day and we felt, by the end, that we had seen it and done it. We stayed up on the hill at the Hilton, and looked out at the river and the Parliament. Hungary has a long and interesting, if not tragic, history. The early settlers were from the north and east, the steppes of Mongolia, known as the Magyar people with a history of horses and high desert customs. They were followed (conquered)years later by the Romans, then the Turks, then the Hapsburgs etc, and more lately the Nazi's and then the communists. I have to tell you, it was not pleasant being Hungarian during the last century....but now you can find the Western influences including McGoulash, Burger King and Kentucky fried...

The opera house was especially impressive. Not destroyed (mostly) during the war, it was the 1800's that saw Budapest become one of the cultural centers of Europe. During and after the World Wars, things were bad and the famous Hungarian uprising of the 1950's was particularly sad, but inndependence was again realized when Russia was dissolved in the 1990's. Now times are much better and the economy is more capitalistic, with all that follows. (good and bad). We had a great time.