It's Always Fun When You Take the Funicular

Artsy picture from inside Fisherman's Bastion atop Castle Hill in Buda (and Budapest)

I love a funicular.  I love Budapest.  So you would have thought that I would have ridden Budapest's own Castle Hill funicular each of my prior trips here,  You would have thought wrong.  But today I have broken my Hungarian funicular maiden.

It's the yellow line, Opera station, transfer to the red line to Batthyány tér.  Exit.

And you see a nice church.  You also see a nice church whichever direction you look when in Europe.  Batthyány tér is, of course, no exception.

And you also the see the Parliament Building.  Third time in Budapest and once again my plans to tour the Parliament building are thwarted.  No tours today for some special event.

Then it's time to take the #19 tram.

All the way to Clark Adam tér (Adam Clark Square, Hungarian being an Asian culture transported and dropped into Central Europe, the name convention has the family name first.  (Gabor Zsa Zsa, por ejemplo.)  And then we are there.

Along with a large number of tourists.

But who doesn't love to take the funicular!

It's fun!  Fun for the whole family!

And after a few extremely fast-moving minutes on the slow train up a mountainside, we arrive at our destination.

Castle Hill.  This is tourist Budapest.  This is where you get accosted by guides selling their services in a variety of languages.  (Italian seemed to be particularly popular today, surprisingly.  English is always in fashion.  French, too.  German did not seem to representing today, for some reason.)

This is a view of the Chain Bridge, or the Széchenyi Lánchíd.  This is the Turul Bird.

It's symbolic.  Real birds don't fly around with swords in the beaks.

This next building is guarded by military-looking gentleman.

I think it used to be something rather it is something, but don't know don't care.  Actually, I do care.  But I gave up when I couldn't get an answer in two google searches.  I think it's just a generic government building now, albeit one with a cool locale.

This is the Honvéd-szobor.  Really.  English please.  It's the Statue of the Independence War.

Then there's the Holy Trinity Statue:

And then there's Mátyás Templom, the Matthias Temple.

It's right next to Fisherman's Bastion, the turrets of which are a signature view from the Pest side of the Duna.

It may be a Friday in late November, but the tourists are out.

This is the Szent István szobra, the St. Stephen statue.

At this point, I'm looking for the ticket booth to get into Mátyás Templom.  Having taken two metro lines, a tram, and a funicular to get here, I want to get in.

Well, the ticket booth appears not to be hidden in the Fisherman's Bastion, which would've been a stupid place to put the ticket booth, seeing as it's already crowded.

So I can see Mátyás Templom, but where's the ticket booth.

But first, let's take a break from the quest for the ticket booth to take another artsy shot using Fisherman's Bastion to frame shots of Pest.

Spoiler alert:  I eventually found the ticket booth.  It was opposite the entrance on the other side of St. St. Stephen the Statue.  It was photogenic so I didn't take a picture.  The interior of Mátyás Templom, on the other hand, was quite photogenic:

Apparently at the noon hour or so that I was there (hey, I got a late start today, I'm on frickin' vacation you know), there was a concert by a children's choir.

The place was packed with tourists and parents, the only two groups of people known to absolutely love love love children's choirs in historic church buildings.

No snark intended, however, as the children were very good.  And they sang four or five songs, which was the perfect length for a lunchtime children's chorale for tourists in late November in a historic church building.  One of those four-hour Springsteen style never-enders most certainly would not have been appropriate.

These are from a chapel off to the side.

Back into the daylight.  Well, it's more gloom-light.  And here is Pope Innocent XI, as statuary.

Streets of Castle Hill, looking back toward Mátyás Templom.

This was a really cool limo.  It did not date back to the 1800's when Castle Hill housed actual Hungarian kings.  In a castle.  But it too was a relic of a bygone, never to return, time.

I pass by the Vienna Gate, the historic exit for Castle Hill.

But I'm not exiting just yet.

I pass by the ruins of the Mary Magdalene Church.

The tower is all that was left standing after WWII bombing.

You can see the outline of the old church walls.  This is a super-gigantic bronze replica of the collar worn by, if I recall correctly, monarchs being coronated.

I could just be making that up, but that wasn't my intent.

The church is gone.

But Kapisztran is still there, at Kapisztran Square.  This is a statue of Svent Janos Kapisztran, the Soldier Saint.

In Orange County, California, they know the Soldier-Saint Svent Janos Kapisztran as San Juan Capistrano.  Fitting that his statue would be outside Hadtörténelmi Levéltár Budapest, the Hungarian military museum.

It's the 100th anniversary of the museum so, in celebration, they are charging 100 HUF, Hungarian forint, to get in.  Is that a lot or is that a little?  Given the current exchange rate, that's about 30 cents U.S.  So, woo-hoo. Bargain.

Lots of mannequins as soldiers.  In fact, given the large number of mannequins who served as troops, it is perhaps unsurprising the bad run of war-losing experienced by the Hungarian military in the 20th Century.

After the war, the mannequin soldiers who survived got jobs as department store models.

The mannequin soldiers rode horses.

And they rode motorcycles too.  Actually, there was a lot more to the museum than mannequins in military uniforms.  A lot more.  And much of it was very interesting, particularly the maps and the segment about Hungary's WWII soldiers being taken prisoners and sent to the Soviet Gulags and other forced labor camps.  Not good.  But for some reason I only ended up taking pictures of the mannequin soldiers.  So there.

Once out of the museum and back in Pest, I could take pictures of statuary, including inappropriately dressed for the sub-freezing temperatures statuary.  (And by "sub-freezing" I mean one or two Fahrenheit degrees below the freezing point.)

Let's end with wooden statutes at the Budapest Christmas market.  I'd want one, but they wouldn't fit into my checking baggage.

Budapest, Hungary: Last Day Begins with a Castle Hill walk

I'm safely (kinda sorta) back in the U.S. of A. now, stranded at LAX because of the volcano ash plume mucked up trans-Atlantic flights, so I have time to post the pictures from my last day in Budapest!

My final day day of tourism in Budapest began with a walk about Castle Hill. Castle Hill is heart and soul of Buda. It's on a hill, and it's got a castle. Hence the name. It also has truckloads, busloads, and boatloads of tourists. Such as myself, although most are organized into groups with guides jabbering in multiple languages. Thus, this also may be called "Tourist Hill."

   The walk began at the "Vienna Gate," so named because, eventually, the road leading out of here would lead to Vienna. (ASIDE: doesn't the English name "Vienna" sound so much more elegant and sophisticated than the harsh-sounding "Wien," as it is called in the Austrian? Vienna is a much more marketable name than Wien.)

   Beautiful old building. This is what us Americans think Europe should look like. Magnificent old buildings, narrow, car-hostile cobblestone streets.

   And nothing screams "tourist district" better than a hansom cab! I had to doublecheck the spelling because, as I wanted to spell the name of these horse-drawn conveyance devices "handsome cab." Yes, they are attractive, but nevertheless, the correct spelling is "hansom." Look it up.

Walking westward, away from the river, was the "Remains of St. Mary Magdalene Church," which was first built in 1456. The church was destroyed in the Ottoman wars and rebuilt. You can see the blend of the old and somewhat newer reconstruction. The church originally bore the name Kapisztrán Templom.

   Off to the side of the Remains of St. Mary Magdalene Church, is a statue honoring the gentleman for whom the church was first name: Kapisztrán János. You've heard of him, I guarantee it. But you probably know Kapisztrán János by the Spanish version of his name: San Juan Capistrano. He is the patron saint of military chaplains. And that is fitting, given that the building behind him is the Hungarian Museum of Military History.

   Still in the upper part of Castle Hill, here is the "Turkish grave," probably the only Ottoman grave within the Castle Hill walls, honoring a pasha who rules Hungary during the Ottoman occupation.

   We now move into the midsection of Castle Hill. And who do we meet? Why, that's Pope Innocent XI! Pope Innocent XI was an important figure, as he was important to fighting the war effort to end the Turkish siege of Vienna and the Ottoman occupation of Hungary. As such, he is not popular in Islamic circles.

   But the literal and figurative centerpiece of Castle Hill is the beautifully ornate Matthias Church.

   This is the tourist magnet, even more so that the Royal Palace.

   And this is the big giant saint-infested obelisk thing in front of the church.

   A short walk down a cobblestone street is this (in)famous statue of a mounted András Hadik. What makes this statue so infamous? You can't really tell all that well from this picture, although you kinda can, but while the rest of the statue has the green appearance of well-weathered bronze, one particular part of the horse's anatomy is polished to a golden sheen. Apparently, over the years, for some reason, I don't know why and I don't want to know the answer or how this even got started, but apparently, over the years, it has been considered good luck to rub the horse's bronze testicles right before a big exam. And students will do what it takes to get good grades. When you're there, this color differential (and hence the particular aspect of the horse's anatomy) is highly noticeable.

   The view of Pest (Parliament, Chain Bridge) from behind Matthias Church atop Castle Hill.

   The war-scarred former Ministry of War building, marking the divide behind the Matthias Church section of Castle Hill, and the Royal Palace section.

   Rear view of the Turul Bird, which is perched on Castle Hill and looks down upon the Chain Bridge and Pest. Only rear views possible from up here, as it the sword-bearing mythical Turul Bird is perched cliff-side. The founding mythology of the Hungarian nation is that the Turul Bird led the Magyars -- with their incomprehensible language -- out of Central Asia and to the plains of Central Europe.

 

Another river view! As you can surmise, I can't get enough of these. Chain Bridge in the foreground, with St. Stephen's Basilica (Szent István-bazilika) immediately behind. Parliament to the left. (NOTE: "Parliament to the left" is decidedly not a political comment, as is there is some concern in the "international community" about the number of votes recently received by a far-right nationalist party.)

   Here is a dapper gentleman enjoying a leisurely repose outside the Royal Palace.

   There is no royal family in Hungary -- Hungary being superior to Great Britain in that regard -- so the Royal Palace is now a museum complex. I visited the Hungarian National Gallery (Magyar Nemzeti Galéria), which houses the great masterpieces of Hungarian art. No snickering! Yes, there may be no such thing as the Hungarian masters, but the museum is nice to get a sense of the national character, and what scenes from history are most valued. It also has a terrific collection of carved wooden altars, generally from the more heavily forested Slovakia (once referred to as "Upper Hungary"). This is one of the more prominent works in the museum, The Bewailing of László Hunyadi.

   I pass through the Palace Gate and my dogs are barking.