Who knew Ferenc Liszt looked like Thomas Jefferson? A tourist from Finland, who said "Yes, he does look like Jefferson!" took this photo outside the Opera House. Every woman in Hungary carries a purse and a shopping bag of some sort, so I did too. This was the day I covered nearly all of Budapest on foot.
These pics are from the trip to "the Danube Bend," an area just north of Budapest and the towns of Szentendre and to Visegrad, the site of 2 early castles, one of which was begun in the early 14th century. This part of the Danube is upriver from the recent chemical spill. Peter Vasvari was my Danube Bend guide. We met last year via email when I asked to publish one of his logos in Stone in America.
Here's the storks' nest, followed by Hungarian sheep (that's Peter in the pic) & Hungarian Gray cattle at an open-air ethnographic museum in Szentendre. The museum is one of my favorite memories.
Looking upriver at the Danube from the "newer" Visegrad palace that sits on the crest of a high hill. My camera couldn't capture the entire panarama, This is 1/4 of the view.
Visegrad's earlier Royal Palace sits along the river and dates to the early 14th century, as does this lion fountain in one of its courtyards. Can you believe we're allowed to sit on it? They're doing extensive restoration on the palace.
The 1956 defeat of the Hungarian Revolution by the Soviets was one of the darkest moments of the Cold War, and every town has a 1956 memorial. Here's a link to information about those events : http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB76/
After the Danube Bend, I took a day trip on my own to Kecskemet, southeast of Budapest. Here's one of its quaint old streets and one of its stodgy more modern apartment blocks.
More to come ...
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