River of Light

It’s was raining when we woke up this morning but by the time we’d had breakfast it wasn’t much.  We decided to go and see the Tutankhamun Exhibition that I’d seen advertised when we were driving from the airport yesterday, which is currently on a world tour.

It isn’t what I expected to be seeing in Budapest, but it blew my mind away, it was totally amazing! They had lots of artefacts including his tomb, coffins and treasures and I’ve added some extras of his coffin and mask.  It’s a little confusing as it said a lot of the items were original but on reading up afterwards I think they’ve been reconstructed, but either way it was incredible to see.

From here we walked all over the city centre, saw a very moving memorial to the Jewish people that had been constructed by locals and included photographs, suitcases and shoes.  There was a photo of a beautiful lady and all it said was ‘my mother a few days before Auschwitz’.  

We walked to the parliament building which is very impressive, and then back along the Danube to our hotel where we had a quick drink in the lounge before heading out again to the New York Cafe.  The cafe dates back to 1894 and is very opulent, having been built in an Italian Renaissance style.  

We came back to the hotel for apéro and as we’ve walked 8.5 miles today, we wanted to eat somewhere fairly close to the hotel.  So we asked the hotel reception to book us a table at one of their recommended restaurants.  It was an excellent choice, only 5 minutes away and was situated in an old monastery.  We both had traditional Hungarian Goulash made with oxtail which was delicious.  A tradition here seems to be gypsy music and there was a small group of 3 playing in the restaurant - they were father, brother and son.  The son who played a violin came over and asked if there was anything they could play for us, so I asked for Canon in D by Pachelbel which was our wedding music.  He said he couldn’t play it on the violin but his father and uncle would on their instruments, it was beautiful!

It’s been a wonderful day, we’ve seen so much and look forward to exploring the Buda side of the Danube tomorrow, but I’ve struggled with my choice of blip!  However, it has to be this scene of Buda Castle that I’ve seen so many times in photos, and is the reason I wanted to come to Budapest, so I could see it for myself.