We were picked up at our hotel by our river cruise line, Scenic, at noon and driven to the boat by bus. Once on board, we were seated in the lounge and served Champagne while our luggage was delivered to our room. They space out the boarding throughout the afternoon so you don't have long to wait to get to your room and unpack. Our room is small but has everything we could possible need.
After a great dinner, we had various presentations about the boat- safety etc.
This morning, we had a 4 hour tour of the City and the Hospital in the Rock. We learned a lot about Budapest -probably more than I will remember to record here. Budapest is in two parts- Buda is on one side of the Danube and Pest (pronounced Pescht) is on the other side. Buda is hilly and Pest is flat. About 1.7 million people live here now. It is a City of many seconds - second largest Parliament building in
Europe (after England's), 2nd subway to be built in Europe and second largest synagogue in the world (the largest is in New York apparently). There are 3 Unesco World Heritage sites here- the Castle district in Buda, the downtown area and the avenue on the Pest side that is a copy of the Champs-Elysees in Paris. One of the bridges, the Chain bridge is fashioned after the London bridge.
Budapest was originally settled in the 900's. It has a long history of being taken over by others, most recently the Germans in the Second World War and then the Russians after the war. During the war, over 70% of the buildings were destroyed. Hungary won its independence from Russia after a 13 day uprising in 1989 and since then elects its government.
There are many beautiful and architecturally interesting buildings here. We found the Castle district on the Buda side particularly charming.
The Hospital in the Rock was constructed in 1939/40 using existing caves as a start. With the connecting tunnels, it is 10 km in length. It was designed to hold about 60 patients in WW2, but during the 1989 uprising against the Russians, had over 600 patients. As a result of the Cuban Missile crisis, the Russians converted it for use as a nuclear bomb shelter with its own power, water and air filter system to enable those in it to live safely for 3 weeks after a nuclear bomb the size of the one dropped in Hiroshima. It was never used. Now it is a museum, complete with many wax dummies as patients and medical staff and was very realistic. On display was the WW2 equipment used for anaesthetics during operations. I'm sure our daughter-in-law would have found it fascinating. I know we did.
Our boat, Jade Scenic -the long one at the top of the picture
a charming street in the Castle district - rainy and cool here todaySorry about the first picture. I didn't intend to include it but of course can't figure out how to delete it without deleting everything else!
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