“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

The following day, the 16th of November 2018, took us to the opposite side of the Danube River, the PEST side of Budapest.

From our hotel we crossed the Széchenyi Chain Bridge to get to the other side. This bridge is so beautiful, don’t you think so?

The view from the bridge…

The view of the Buda side from the Pest Side .

Now let us start our walk on this side of the Danube. This is the magnificent Parliament Building.

Here we saw these public art – The Shoes on the Danube (which I will talk about on a later post) and located on the steps of the parliament house is a bronze statue of the famous Hungarian poet, Attila Jozsef, (1905-1937),

About a 15 minutes walk from the Shoes on the Danube is this grand architecture. The St. Stephen’s Basilica, a Roman Catholic basilica, is named in honour of Stephen, the first King of Hungary.

The interior is a mixture of reddish marble and gold. The pillars and ceiling are very ornate and the dome was very impressive as well.

Continuing on, about half an hour walk, we arrived at the Heroes Square. This is an outdoor World Heritage site which took us to a journey through Hungarian history. But though we don’t know much about its history, seeing the monumental statues were enough to impress us.

Then it was time for lunch or shall we say… very late lunch at Gundel. The Gundel Cafe Patisserie Restaurant is popular because of its history (opened in 1894) and was renovated in the 1990s by Hungarian-American restaurateur George Lang.

And here is the interior which was quite impressive as well. At the entry is a bust of Gundel Janos the father of the former owner of the restaurant. There were photos on the wall of important and well known people who have dined here.

Next stop is the Budapest Christmas Market. I had always wanted to see a Christmas market but was way too early to get to Prague and Vienna but was just in time for this one, the Budapest Christmas market.

Bought some hot fresh chestnuts then had an awesome dinner in one of the stalls.

Then crossed the bridge again to get back to our hotel.

What a tiring but enjoyable day!