Week 4 - Budapest, Hungary – Vincent Sonneville

Week 4 - Budapest, Hungary – Vincent Sonneville

Buda vs Pest

After making a quick visit to Slowakia, which was lovely we were on our way to Budapest, Hungary. I was very excited for this week. Our first stop, oddly enough, was the Chain bridge or in Hungarian, Szechenyi lanchid. We arrived at night and heard it was especially beautiful at nightfall so we thought why not?

The next few days we spent walking through every crevice of Budapest. There was so much to do and see we didn’t know where to start. The first thing we were curious about was the separation of the city by the Danube River. On the right side there was Pest and on the left Buda. Our hotel was in Pest, the livelier commercial side of Budapest. Buda we discovered is more romantic, certainly quieter and has incredible views of the entire city. Similar to the Seine that runs through Paris, the Danube was and still is today a very important aspect of economic and financial life in Budapest. Historians explained how crucial the river, which is the second largest in Europe, was to the success of economic growth and trade with other countries. Merchants that had traveled all around the world came together on the waters of the Danube to trade and sail to other cities. 

 

Thinking of the week we had spent in Warsaw, we decided to also go visit the Jewish shoe memorial along the banks of the river Danube promenade. The memorial represents a large group of Jewish inhabitants that were forced to take their shoes off before being shot and left to die during the Second World War.

 

Our last day we decided to go to the Szepmuveszeti Museum of Art. The museum has over 100,000 pieces all collected from around the world. We walked through the museums six departments; Egyptian, Antique, Old sculpture gallery, Old painter gallery, Modern collection, Graphics collection, not a single one of us could take our eyes off the walls around us.