Our third day was castle day. We took the funicular that was just a few minutes from our hotel. A quick ride up and we were enjoying more spectacular views of this amazing city.
We entered the palace grounds and looked around, enjoying the view. The palace now houses an art gallery, that we unfortunately didn't have the time to visit.
We are literally right above our hotel. Karina could see her room!
Still on the castle side, or Buda, we walked into the little town to visit the Matyas church. It had beautiful tile work on the roof, but unfortunately most of the interesting sights on the inside were being restored.
The fisherman's bastion is right next to the church, so we spent some time taking more photos, and enjoying the view.
We then did a little walk around the streets surrounding the church, before having lunch and heading to the Hungarian Wine Society to do a tasting. No photos of that, unfortunately, but it was a lot of fun, and we tasted some really delicious wines. We bought a couple of bottles, and enjoyed the walk down from the castle back to our hotel.
No time to rest, we moved on to St. Stephen's Basilica, on the Pest side, the same one we found on our first night. But today we were going inside!
What a spectacular church! I don't really know what to say except that it was really breathtaking. And there was a relic, someone's hand. What a treat. Again, I was reminded of St. Isaac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg. But I don't remember there being a relic there.
We continued our walk down Andrassy Utca, where there are many more beautiful buildings, and stopped at the Opera House.
We went into the lobby to take some photos, and had fun comparing it to the Paris Opera that we had just visited. We then headed just across the street to the Callas Cafe for tea and cake.
It was another beautiful cafe. I have to admit that we were absolutely wiped by this point, and had an early dinner and were planning on having an early night. We went out for more cake at another famous coffee house on Andrassy St, and during the walk home Erik had an unfortunate accident with his umbrella which resulted in us taking an unplanned taxi tour of Budapest first to the hospital, then to the eye clinic. Long story short, he is absolutely fine, and we couldn't believe how nice people were. And how many people spoke English.
Did I mention that we loved this city? :)
View from our hotel room
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