Hungary sixth part - Budapest, the beautiful capital
On Wednesday
I drove to Budapest
and picked up Anja at the airport. Together we went to the city and got the
opportunity to visit Nicolle there. She has got a flat right in the city centre
and we could stay there, THANKS 
In the evening we went to a nice restaurant and enjoyed Hungarian food. Later we met Noemi and David, I knew them from Veszprém. They showed us the terrific view over the lightened city from the Citadella (it is a castle on the top of the tallest hill).
Next day we started the tour in Budapest and went to the pedestrian area and visited the St. Stephan cathedral. It is the church of the founder of Hungary and you will find there a big marmoreal statue of him and even his (maybe original) right hand. For Lunch we met Mr. Barabacs, he is the representative of BEYER Limited in Hungary. With him we had a nice chat about the Hungarian history and the development of economy.
Because of the bad weather we decided to visit one of the swimming-pools with hot spring water (Budapest has got about 123 hot springs!). The swimming-pool is in old style, quite beautiful and you can chill out wonderful. After that we went to “Shakespeare”-restaurant, where you find figures “playing” some scenes of Shakespeare’s works.
The weather was better on Friday and we were able to visit the mountain with the castle. It is typical for Hungarian cities to build the castle on the hill to have better possibilities to fight against enemies. Unfortunately the castle was total damaged in II. World War, so you find the original facade, but in the inner view, it isn’t pompous like a palace anymore. Today there is a museum where you can observe paints of Hungarian painter. We also visited the most impressive church of Budapest, the church of Matthias. All of the walls are painted and in this church there were the last kings of Hungary crowned. You also can find there a duplicate of the kings’ crown in the altar. It was set up there in year 2000, on the occasion of 1,000-year-celebration of Hungary.
Also impressive is a visit of the caves. They are quite old and at least they were used as bunker and for the military intelligent agency. But after 1990 they decided to rebuild it, like it was original and now it is like an adventure for you. The last part is totally dark and there is just a cable to hold and find the exit…
On Saturday we visited the maybe most beautiful house of parliament you will find in the world. The building is the biggest in Hungary and has about 690 rooms. The architecture looks really impressive, but when you stay inside, it is just unbelievable. Almost every wand is painted and they used about 40 kilograms of gold. After the big entrance hall you enter the hall with dome where you can see the original crown and insignias of Hungary. After a walk through the lobby for members of parliament you can see the plenar hall.
At noon I
went to a hairdresser and after that we walked around the beautiful Andrussy Street up
to the Heroes’ square. On the evening we reached the Christmas market and I
tried a very tasty kind of grilled cake. Dinner we had in a good restaurant,
called “Fatal”. There you get such unbelievable portions that we were only
satisfied 
The Jewish synagogue opens on Sunday, so we could visit one of the biggest and most beautiful synagogues in Europe. Finally we visited the Citadella where you can go to the bunker; there is an interesting photo exhibition about the 2nd World War in Budapest. Before we left this nice city we went to the park of monuments where we gazed the big statues, which were standing on the squares of the capital up to 1990.
