Eastern europe day 3

This is a photo of the Mathias Fountain. The fountain can be found on one of the wings of the palace. Our guide explained that the reason why King Mathias isn't St. Mathias is because he had many girlfriends. The story behind this found involves one of Mathias' many girlfriends. She was the daughter of a hunter the king met on one of his many trips that he made in-cognitor throughout Hungary. It's a relatively tragic one and I'll get to it next time after i return back to Singapore. This ends our city tour and it's the river cruise next. :-)

Eastern europe day 3

After St. Stephen's Basillica we made our way to the Fisherman's Bastion. The above is a statue of the first king of Hungary. I think his name is St. Stephen. We walked around the the place and took some shots of the area across the river then made our way pass a concert hall, i think it used to be the royal concept hall, and the place where the president works. After that we made our way down to the palace which is now an art museum. We didn't go in though.

Eastern europe day 3

This is a picture of St. Stephen's Basillica. It's a really pretty building. If i remember correctly the building was completely destroyed during world war 2 and the reconstruction took 20 year and was completed only a few years ago. The original basillica was built by 3 architects, two of whom died during the construction of the building. After that it's the fisherman's bastion. :-)

Eastern europe day 3

After our visit to the hero's square, we took a short walk to dracular's castle. It's not the real castle, just a replica. The real one is in romania. There are several buildings in this small area and they were all built in different architectural styles in order to commerate 1000 years since the founding of hungary. A small but very nice park surrounds the castle. Nice and quite. Next we go to st. Stephen's basillca. :-)

Eastern europe day 3

We go on a city tour in the morning on our 2nd day in budapest. Our first stop is the hero's square. It's a huge parade square flanked by art museums. There are statues of arc angel gabriel and the 7 heroes of hungary at the top of the square. We're off to dracula's castle next. :-)

Eastern europe day 2

We made our first sight seeing stop of the day at a little hillside fort called citadella. The fort offers a beautiful view of budapest and the river danube. It's a really pretty place surrounded by lots of greenery and a nice little park which would probably be really nice for an evening walk. Dinner is next. :-)

Eastern europe day 2

Now that the borders have been open, crossing over to Hungary is a quiet affair. Kinda wish that there was still a border crossing, would be cool to get a stamp in the passport. :-) The above is a photo taken soon after the crossing into Hungary. Apparently it is still not advisable to take photos of the border crossing so hence a photo of a field of flowers instead. Can't wait to get to Budapest. :-)