Budapest

When we joined our first Hungarian motorway a few days back, the road signs made us suspect that we should maybe be paying for the privilege, but there were no toll booths. Having knocked off a few more motorways during our to-ing and fro-ing in and out of the country I thought it was about time we investigated further.

A phone call to the ‘English speaking’ switchboard of Hungary’s ‘charged speedway network’ has limited interest to a person with the attention span of a goldfish, so needless to say we drove 140 miles north to the capital without touching one ‘vignette’ motorway, yes, I’ve done it again, and if we get fined for what we’ve already driven then I’ll plead insanity.

The further north we drove through the country the more it felt like we were coming into a more prosperous environment, a bit like the opposite from England! The south is all farming villages, old tractors and Trabant cars, the north seems to be much further on, the towns and villages are nothing like the south where it’s Hungary’s version of Longtown and Frizington. People are dressed from this millennium, there’s a lot of modern architecture around, like Tesco superstores, a Mercedes factory etc etc, but there’s no escaping the fact that the people from the south are so welcoming.

Here are some photos of our day trip around Buda and Pest:

The Great Synagogue
 Largest in Europe and 2nd largest in the world, seats 3,000 people

House of Terror
Now a museum and memorial to those tortured and murdered
under the communist and fascists regimes

The view from the Citadel with 2 tourists photo bombing

A rather large lunch!

Budapest Castle

Parliament 

University of Technology and Economics

War Museum

and with a tourist to give some idea of scale