Hungary, here we come!

At the end of our last post we were leaving for a concert at the Schonbrunn Palace. What a memorable ending to our stay in Vienna, listening to Mozart's music in a room where he had performed it himself!

We were allowed to take photos inside up until concert time. Here's the Great Hall, where the concert took place.

This morning we boarded Big Blue bound for Budapest. An hour later we crossed the border into Hungary. We passed more wind turbines, many of them amid sunflower fields. (Sunflower seeds are one of Hungary's leading exports.)

When we reached our hotel, which is right across the Danube from the Parliament Building (shown below) we grabbed lunch in yet another picturesque outdoor cafe, then reboarded the bus for an afternoon tour of the city.

Budapest is actually made up of 2 cities from opposite sides of the river. Our hotel is on the Buda side of the river, and the Parliament is on the Pest side. Within the city, ten bridges (two of them pedestrian-only) cross the Danube. In the photo below, hilly Buda is on the left and Pest is flatter, on the right.

We passed an impressive World War I monument so I snapped a photo through the bus window -- not the best pic, but it does show the scale of it.

We stopped at the Liberty Statue, built after WWII to commemorate Hungary's liberation from Germany. 

We also saw the Holy Trinity Column which memorializes the victims of the "Black Death" -- the plague of the 1300's that killed so much of the population. There are columns just like this one in other European cities that suffered huge losses due to the plague.

Budapest is very pretty with varied architecture.

When we got back to our room, Bill stepped out onto our balcony and took a double-take. He called me over to take a look -- doesn't this look like a bus floating down the river???

Tonight as we were walking back to our hotel from dinner, we were in awe of Budapest's night lights. It's been a terrific first day in Hungary!