June 20 – Budapest, Hungary. Today we are going to visit the inside of the Parliament building for the first time. We've seen the outside often but never inside. I have it on reliable sources that it's nice.
As we entered the building we were facing a large staircase that ascends from the center of the building. Like the Parliament in England it used to have two separate houses, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The House of Lords was abolished years ago but it's the mirror image of the other side and we will be visiting it. Not surprisingly we had to go through airport style security to enter and a security person tailed us all the way through.
The first thing we came upon is a model of the building built of matchsticks. Pretty impressive, this is an ornate and complex structure and they got it just right. The entry hall is larger than the one in the Winter Palace but not as ornate. The reason the building is so big is that it was built to be the seat of government for the entire Hungarian Empire. Since WW I, where they were on the losing side they were stripped of all their land except the country of Hungary. So a pretty small country has a ginormous capital building.
There's a lot of gold in the decorations and some nice statuary. I don't know most of the people they depict so I don't have any good stories about them. One interesting feature in the hall outside the meeting room are some long cigar racks. They're numbered and have and ashtray built in so that members could set their cigars down to run in and vote. When they returned they went to the holder with their number and retrieved their cigars. Very ecologically sound practice.
From the Parliament building we drove to the Gundel Restaurant to have a snack. They are apparently noted for their crepes and that's what we're having. They were served with chocolate sauce and some finely chopped dried oranges. The combination was very good.
From there we went to the City Park to see the castles. They were built for an exhibition celebrating the 1,000 year anniversary of Hungary. There are copies of famous castles from the kingdom in various styles. They are really just facades, they are not finished inside but in a very small area you can visit castles from a wide area and from different periods.
From there we went to the City Park to see the castles. They were built for an exhibition celebrating the 1,000 year anniversary of Hungary. There are copies of famous castles from the kingdom in various styles. They are really just facades, they are not finished inside but in a very small area you can visit castles from a wide area and from different periods. One tower on the first castle is said to be a copy of the tower from Dracula's Castle, now in Romania.
Next was a visit to the city market. I'd been there before and it was too hot to stay inside so I really didn't give it much attention. It was a pleasant day of low stress touring.
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