Welcome to Lu's trip! You can click on any picture to see it larger
Lu's First Day Here - Hero's Square
September 1, 1999
Lu arrived in Budapest around 11:00 am Wednesday morning. Of course she left San Diego on Tuesday morning, and with very little sleep on the flight our job was to keep her awake through the afternoon. After picking Mackenzie up from school we set out for Hero Square. We figured it required the least amount of walking or thinking on Lu's part because we have seen it both other times that we have been here. We didn't add in the fact that Mackenzie hadn't seen it and would want to know the info on all the statues! Since we didn't bring any guide book with us we gave her all the info we could remember. Unfortunately our idea of no thinking didn't work out all that well! Sorry Lu!
Oh, for those who haven't been to Hero's Square it contains the statues of Hungarian kings and the seven founding Magyar tribal chieftans and the Monument of the Unknown Soldier.
From Hero's Square we walked across a bridge (where they rowboat/paddle boat in the summer and ice skate in the winter) to the Vajdahunyad Castle area where the Grim Reaper sits. Okay actually it's some Monk or something, but he looks like the Grim Reaper to us.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4
Chain Bridge and Royal Palace
So we start off on our first tour of some of the sights. We found a nice guide book that describes some walks that will eventually take us around to many of the sights of Budapest. We decide that we know the general area since it starts at the Chain Bridge (the one with the lions). We get down to the area and in our search for parking get to go through the Buda Castle Hill Tunnel that was built in 1837 3 times!
We start off by walking across the Chain Bridge (and this is the view from the bridge) because Mackenzie has been asking to cross that bridge since we got here. We pass the lions that sit at each end of the bridge and tell her the story that we heard from Gus about the guy who sculpted the lions. Seems when they opened the bridge the apprentice noticed that the lions had no tongues and said it out loud, at which time the embarrassed sculptor jumped off the bridge to his death. Later, while we were reading the guide book we learned that this is an old myth and the guy lived to be an old man (and we checked out the lions, there are tongues in there).
The mosaic Coat of Arms of Hungary is on the wall next to the Funicular (incline railcar). Though it was put together over 100 years ago it was walled up for forty years (1949-89) because it wasn't politically correct to picture angels in Hungary.
We rode the funicular up to see the Castle of Buda and this is the view from the top.
Saturday Continues with Lu and us!