Weekend in Budapest

Remeber at the beginning of my trip to Belgrade I said I had a great weekend trip planned?  Well I finally got to go on it!  I went to Budapest Hungary with a friend that I used to work with in Plano.  He now lives in Holland.  We met up on Friday night.  All day on Friday, I was very nervous.  I almost missed my plane back to Belgrade from Istanbul (stupid traffic) and anyone that knows me knows how I freak out about getting to the airport early. 

My other source of stress was the fact that I was going to be driving outside of Serbia and going through a border crossing in the Marbo car.  Everyone said it would be ok, but that you can always get stopped for no reason.  Plus I wasn't sure if I had all of the necessary documents.

Anyway, I made the 4 hour drive with no troubles, other than it was amazingly boring.  The sun goes down at 4pm and by 5pm, it is pitch black.  But I collected some new stamps for my passport, and can cross Hungary off the list!

I had seen pictures of Budapest, but I wasn't expecting it to be so beautiful.  The buildings and statues were really cool.

Here is the Chain Bridge at night.  It was right outside of our hotel, and it was very pretty.

Near Castle Hill

Parliament from Buda

Hungarian Statue of Libery built in honor of the Russian Soldiers in 1945

Cathedral?

Pest from Buda Hills

Interesting roof tiles

Buda and Danube

Creepy bird with a golden ring that was part of the gate at the castle

Statues in the Castle

We saw all of these things on Saturday.  The weather was cloudy as you can see, but we still managed to see a lot of sights.  We also walked around Pest (on the other side of the river) and had a nice dinner over there.

On Sunday, we walked to Margaret Island, which is in the Danube between Buda (where the hills are) and Pest (the flat commercial district).  It was a big park and very pretty, but we didn't get any photos.  We walked along the river near Parliament and saw this display.

It is a memorial to the Budapest Jews who fell victim to the Arrow Cross militiamen in Budapest and depicts their shoes left behind on the bank when they fell into the river after having been shot during World War II.

And before heading to the airport to drop off my friend, we drove to Momento Park.  This is where you can find socialist/communist statues that were deemed inappropriate after the fall of communism in the early 1990's.

This statue was at least 20 feet tall.  I guess he is running in a hurricane.

Here were three statues.  They all have their arms raised.

And just a few more from around Budapest because it was so pretty:

It was a great weekend and was exactly what I needed after a stressful week at work.  I highly recommend a visit to Budapest.