December 27 – Budapest, Art Museum and The Great Hall Market

More touring around Budapest this morning.  These photos are from around the city.

We first stopped at the National Theater that sits beside the Danube. 

Some interesting sculptures…

and what looks to be a colonnade that fell into a river. 

After more driving we unloaded to do some walking.  We were dropped off just outside of the
Szechenyi Spa.  Hungary has many spas and this one is one of the largest in Budapest. 
We didn’t have tickets so were only able to go inside the lobby.

It was a short walkover to Vajdahunyard Castle (Dracula’s Castle). It is only a little of 100 years old.  It was built in 1896 for the Millennial Festival to celebrate the 1000^th
birthday of Hungary.  The original was made of wood and cardboard as it was to be a temporary building.  However, the people loved it so much that it was decided to keep and rebuild it with stone. 

The buildings in the complex are of many different styles including Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque.

A snack table inside the courtyard of the castle.

 

In the distance we saw many people skating on a very large
outdoor rink.

From there we went to the Hero’s Square with it’s many statues of Hungarian heroes.  The seven horsemen at the base of the column represent the seven original Hungarian tribes.   

Then we walked over to the nearby fine arts museum where we had as hour to wander the exhibits.  The architecture was beautiful...

and they had a very nice art collection.

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More Fine Arts Museum

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Liam spent the entire time sitting on a bench working on string puzzles.  He enlisted Nana to help with a few.  He saw nothing in the museum but Nana did manage to get a bit of touring done.  

From there we went to the Great Market Hall, one of the largest covered markets in Europe.  The lower level contained the food stalls.  The upper level had some restaurants and lots of souvenir shops.  Mary bought another rubber ducky (actually, a rubber Christmas reindeer) for grandson Atlas.

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More Great Market Hall

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We had lunch at the one sit-down restaurant in the hall and then headed back to the hotel. 

Jessica, Will and Liam went to a retro museum and had dinner out near there.  We took Charlie out for dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant.  Very good food.