Hero’s Square

Friday, May 11

Today we walked the rest of Andrássy Street all the way down to one of the most iconic places in all of Budapest: Hero’s Square.  It also happens to be a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The square contains a monument celebrating the millennial celebration in 1896.  In addition there are sculptures of the seven Magyar Chiefs, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and sculptures of important people from Hungary’s history.  The day we visited the place was pandemonium.  The area had been sectioned off into several playing fields where the International Women’s Handball Semifinals were to be played.  Stands had been setup at one end and food trucks were all along the perimeter.

(Hero’s Square)

Standing in the middle you can see that it’s a large and impressive square.  To each side is a large building.  One contains the Museum of Fine Arts and the other is the Museum of Contemporary Art.  The square is situated in City Park. We walked around the park to see all of its wonders.

The first sight we came to was Vajdahunyad Castle.  The castle, originally constructed of wood, cardboard and paper, was also built for the 1986 millennial celebration.  It was such a popular attraction that it was later rebuilt using brick and stone.  In front of the castle is a lake where you can rent pedal boats. On the far shore is a restaurant with a view of the entire scene.  Different parts of the castle were constructed to reflect different time periods in Hungary’s history and so parts are Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque.  The castle also houses the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture which is the largest agricultural museum in Europe.

(Vajdahunyad Castle)

We walked around the grounds and peeked inside the museum to get some idea of what the interior looked like.  You can buy tickets to tour two of the towers but that didn’t interest us.  We did find the famous sculpture of Anonymous, who in 1200 AD wrote the “Deeds of the Hungarians” that chronicles the history of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin.  Legend says that if you touch your pen to his then you will become a great writer.  Unfortunately we use a laptop to write this blog and neglected to bring it along.

We walked around the other side of the castle and found a stream, which dogs seemed to love to romp in, and another smaller lake.  To the side was a large field where food stands are setup for the weekend crowds.  We ate lunch there.  We had a salad with strips of chicken that had been covered in panko and deep fried along with a strawberry lemonade.

Next we saw the legendary Széchenyi Bath House.  We plan to visit it at a later date and will write more about it when we do.  Then it was on to the zoo.

The Budapest Zoo is the oldest zoo in Hungary and one of the oldest in Europe.  It opened on August 9, 1866.  Originally it was private and housed only species native to Hungary.  In 1907 it was taken over by the city and has expanded in size and scope ever since.  We had a wonderful time.

The zoo is much larger than you would expect when you see it from the outside and it contained many interesting displays.  Most of the animals are held in naturalistic settings which are arranged to allow visitors as intimate an experience with the animals as possible.

(Baby Warthogs at Work)

The zoo’s animals are flourishing.  We saw many sets of babies.  One of the most entertaining was the baby elephant.  He was barely six months old and loved to play in the pool.  His enclosure also contained his mother and his big sister, who was obviously responsible for keeping him out of trouble.  We have a wonderful video of their antics.  Dad, who was absolutely enormous, was in an adjacent pen.  He’d figured out a way to interact with people by sticking his trunk through a small opening between the gate and the wall in the elephant house.  You could actually touch his trunk (and he seemed to like it).  It was very sweet.

The original video is much longer but there are limitations as to what we can post.  Still, it’s a minute in length and may take some time to download.  If you want to see the entire thing send us a message and we’ll see if we can send it to you.

(Adolescent and Baby Elephant Playing)

The highlight of the day might have been the Kea enclosure.  Keas are large parrots from New Zealand.  They have been nicknamed ‘The Clown of the Mountains’.  This seems apt considering our experience.  They are curious and clever animals that love to interact with people.  When we walked by one of the birds offered us some greenery by shoving it through the cage bars.  At first we were reluctant to take it because the bird has a long, sharp beak but he insisted and we obliged.  We then gave it back to him and he accepted it.  For 20 minutes we took turns finding things like grasses and leaves to exchange through the cage.  At one point he hopped along the perimeter beckoning us to follow him.  We did.  It was very endearing.  We saw him do these behaviors with other visitors too.

We had intended to visit the Museum of Fine Arts but it was closed for a multiyear renovation.  We were disappointed but figured it would give us a good excuse to return to the city in the future.

Distance walked: 9.3 miles

Saturday, May 12

Today we went to the Ecseri Flea Market.  It is the largest flea market in a city known for its flea markets.  The market is about seven miles from our apartment so this gave us an excuse to finally try out the mass transit system.  The public transportation system in Budapest is rather complex.  The choices include the subway (metro), yellow street cars, busses and trolley busses.  Fortunately the cost for all of them is the same.  In cases where you can’t go directly and have to change there is an additional fare.  Of course residents seem to have monthly passes.

There are touch screen ticket machines but they are only in Magyar so we went to a ticket window.  Based on the information we’d read ticket sellers often speak only Magyar but ours, thankfully, spoke fairly good English.  We took the bus.  We figured it would be like a free tour of the city.

We normally refer to the language that Hungarians speak as Hungarian.  They call it Magyar and it has an interesting history.  Over 1,000 years ago the Magyars came from an area in Asia near modern day Siberia.  Their language was an Asian language.  When these peoples migrated West some of them settled in the Carpathian Basin and became the Hungarian Nation.  Some continued on to Finland.  Originally the the Fins and the Hungarians spoke the same language but over the years it has diverged to such an extent that today they are completely different languages.  Modern Hungarian is based roughly on the Latin alphabet but its pronunciation is unlike anything we are used to.  Magyar is reputed to be one of the hardest languages for Westerners to learn.

The Flea Market resembled any other market that you may have seen only it was larger.  There were hundreds of booths and stalls.  We saw the usual “junk” but also saw a lot of interesting items.  One booth had a fantastic collection of old camera equipment for sale.  The pieces looked to be in wonderful condition and had obviously been completely restored.  We were on the lookout for Herend.  We found pieces from several companies that made Herend style products but we also found large quantities of the real thing.  The prices weren’t bad but haggling is part of the experience.  We were there for a several hours but didn’t buy anything.

On the way back we took a different bus so that we could visit the Bela Bartok Concert Hall.  It is located within the Ludwig Museum at the foot of the Rákóczi Bridge.  It’s a large, modern looking complex that includes a high quality restaurant.  We had intended to purchase tickets to see Haydn’s ‘Seasons’ Oratorio but when we found that they were also performing ‘The Messiah’ we walked away with tickets for that instead.  By the end of this month we will have seen a performance in all of the city’s major concert halls.

Just outside, near the river, there was a unique structure called The Zikkurat.  It looks like an inverted cone and has a long sloping ramp along the perimeter that leads to a viewing platform.  The ramp has a gradual incline which makes for an easy walk.  We had a great view of the entire city from there.  Granted that the location is somewhat South of the city’s main attractions but we’ve never seen it mentioned in any guidebook.

From there we took one of the trams that run along the river (it’s a great way to see riverfront).  We were on our way to late lunch at a place called The Zoo Cafe.  This wacky place is filled with all sorts of small animals that will visit you during the course of your meal.  Let’s be clear about one thing: you don’t go there for the food.  It was not very good.

There’s a sheet of rules sitting at every table.  The basic idea is that you should not feed any of the animals nor should you disturb any of the sleeping cats.  After we ordered one of the staff began bringing different animals to our table.  We started with a colorful chameleon.  After that we entertained a bearded dragon followed by a little turtle, a guinea pig and a rabbit.  We had the opportunity to hold a large boa constrictor but opted for more cuddly creatures.  The place was crawling with cats and most of them were huge.  Typically some of them were aloof but some craved attention.  We petted several.  Just as we were leaving a cockatoo swooped down on to the shoulder of a person sitting at the next table.  The man was quite startled.  It was very amusing.  All of the animals seemed clean and healthy.  The restaurant itself was very clean and any ‘accidents’ were attended to very quickly.  All tables were equipped with large bottles of Purell which we used quite a lot of.  We can’t imagine this kind of restaurant existing in the U.S. but it was a lot of fun and worth the damage to our stomachs.

(Lunch with the Animals)

Distance walked: 6.4 miles