Clear blue skies greeted us for disembarkation day. We got out of bed, showered and packed up our cabin, prior to the settling accounts. Our AirBnB won’t be ready until the afternoon, so we left our baggage on the ship while we went out exploring. Overall, we’d enjoyed the cruise. It was a great way to cover a lot of western and central Europe, but we are grateful to have some of our own company for a few days and to stop for coffees and drinks without being granted ‘free time’ from a tour guide.
The first thing we wanted to do was have a look inside St Stephen’s Basilica that we’d only seen from the outside yesterday. This promoted a discussion between us about the difference between a cathedral and a basilica and the answer is quite simple. A cathedral is the seat of a bishop and a basilica is determined to be significant by the pope. They were setting up for a big mass, with the school students returning to school after summer holidays. Here’s a few pictures from the inside.
To add to our ecumenical experience we walked from the basilica to one of Budapest’s more colourful synagogues. In my experience, these are sombre, austere spaces and ofter not easily recognisable from the streets they lie on. This one is different and it almost celebrates the survival and regrowth of the jewish community here. In 1930, approximately 200,000 jews lived in the jewish quarter, but was reduced to below 70,000 in 1945 through deportations and concentration camps. There are now an estimated 80,000 jews living in Budapest. The Jewish Quarter has largely become the party district as ‘Ruin Bars’ have continued to spring up.
From the synagogue, we walked towards the river, but wanted to have some lunch. We stopped in one of the popular eating strips and while having lunch, noted an english language police car. It turned out that the was an American movie being filmed later that day. My bet was on another in the Marvel film. After my typically hungarian beef stew we resumed our walk to another poignant memorial.
On the bank of the Danube some sculptures of shoes have been placed. These represent jews who were removed from the ghetto, their valuable shoes removed and then executed, into the river. The memorial with the shoes is a grim reminder of the dark past that Budapest and Hungary still seem to struggle with today.
From there we walked back to the ship to collect our bags that were entrusted to the ship staff to look after. We’d ended up walking about 7 or 8 kilometres in pretty hot weather, so we weren’t so much in the mood for a bag search. After a couple of unsatisfying conversations we found our bags in the cab rank, which was a little odd because we weren’t catching a cab. No big disasters though, we recovered our bags and added another 500 metres to our big walking day to get to our AirBnB, which is surprisingly spacious and has great views over the Danube.
After getting into the room, which took a little effort to find among the Hungarian street names and numbering systems, we cooled off a bit and then did a quick run over the road to the central market to buy some amazing cheese, cured ham, salami and foie gras and we were good for dinner as the sunset and all the boats crowded the Danube, just like us last night. Dessert was strudel and ice cream.
Tomorrow, we are going to try to navigate the public transport system. I’ve already downloaded the BudapestGo app, so I don’t cop a hefty fine like our cruise buddies did!
Until tomorrow.
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