December 28 – Jewish Quarter and the Nutcracker

 Mary's knee is bothering her so she stayed on board and Paul took the walking tour to the
Jewish quarter.  First stop was the Dohany Street Synagogue, the largest in Europe and second largest in the world, seating about 3,000 people.  

The interior has balconies, men on the ground floor, women in the balconies.  Very beautiful interior.

In the back there is the Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park, dedicated to Raoul, a Swedish diplomat that saved thousands of Jews in German-occupied Hungary during WWII.

In that park is the Tree of Life memorial.  The sculpture commemorates the at least 400,000
Hungarian Jews murdered by the Nazis and their Hungarian collaborators during
World War II.  This is the work of the sculptor Imre Varga. It is a
weeping willow steel tree on whose leaves are the names of many Jews
exterminated during the Nazi occupation.  Many of the leaves remain blank,
to symbolically remember all of those murdered. It is very special work,
impactful and sobering.

There is also a Jewish cemetery on the grounds where more than 2,000 Jews are buried.  The died in the ghetto that was established by the Nazis to imprison the Jews. 

We visited the Hungarian Jewish Museum that is attached to the synagogue.  

We then walked the Jewish quarter seeing some interesting buildings and art.

And saw another two of the most important synagogues, the Rumbach Street Synagogue...

 

and the Kazinczy Synagogue.

Some of us, Jessica, Charlie, Tara, Julie, David, and Paul, had lunch at a falafel restaurant at the start of the Gozsdu Udvar street market, and afterwards walked, and shopped the market.

 

In the evening we all headed off to the Budapest Opera House to see the Nutcracker.  

The auditorium was richly appointed and there were many tiers of balcony boxes. 

Our seats were in the fourth row from the front so we could see everything up close.  It was a beautiful performance.

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Video of Opera House
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After the show most of the group headed off to a nearby tapa place for dinner.  Will, Liam, David and Julie headed out to find something else.  We were all back to the hotel at a not too terribly late hour.