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Budapest
Summer 2000's long-awaited (and well-earned!) holiday was to Budapest, in Hungary. Another city (like Prague) that Andrew has wanted to visit for a long time. Partly because of its musical associations (and we are talking about Bartók and Ligeti here, not Liszt!), because of the architecture (not least the Hungarian version of Art Nouveau, the secessionist style, as exemplified by the singular architect Ödön Lechner), and partly because (for us, at least) maybe it represented, as Bram Stoker described it in his book “Dracula”, the boundary between West and East.
We used the British Midland compensation vouchers that we got on our trip to Amsterdam in 1999 to virtually halve the cost of the return flight from London to Budapest to £104 each. Unfortunately, since we booked the tickets in February 2000 British Midland changed their Budapest timetable, so we ended up departing from Heathrow at 07:40 in the morning (aaargh!). We booked a room by e-mail for five nights at the Hotel Victoria, which is sited right on the banks of the Danube at the foot of the old town (Buda).
Because we had to book this trip so far in advance (we needed to cash-in our compensation vouchers by the end of February 2000), we were able to do quite a lot of reading-up for this one, including Michael Jacobs' very informative (if a trifle dry, in parts) book “Budapest - a cultural guide” (Oxford University Press, 1998). So we had a pretty good idea about what we want to do and see.
As usual, we've provided here a brief Journal, a review of the Hotel and some of the Restaurants & Cafés we visited, as well as some Photos and pages about Places of interest. There is also a Notepad containing links and other information we used inplanning our trip.
Andrew & Dave
September 2000 |
