A Limes Ran Through It- Aquincum and Római-part

Our recent visit to the Kiscelli Museum came with the extra bonus of a free ticket to either the Castle or the Aquincum museums, which can be used for up to 30 days from the purchase of the first ticket. Emboldened by this prospective, we decided to go for the Aquincum museum, which proved to…

Museum on the Top of Town

Encouraged by our Lisbon exploits, we decided that it’s high time we tackled yet another Budapest hill, and the one we picked as our next target was Mátyás-hegy, towering at 299 metres and lying in Buda’s third district, just a little off the more popular Hármashatár-hegy, which we had already mapped last summer. Mátyás-hegy is…

A Glimpse into the Hidden Budapest

One of my most frequent compulsions when walking the streets of Budapest is stealing a furtive glance into the inner courtyards of the houses when an unsuspecting inhabitant is going in, perhaps lingering a few seconds to hoist a shopping bag or lead a reluctant mutt over the threshold. Every now and then, I glimpse…

Andrássy Avenue with a Twist or Two

It all began with the thought that we should have a walk along the stretch of Andrássy which starts at Oktogon and ends at Heroes’ Square- I am completely partial to this bit of the avenue, with its ivy clad villas and stately air, as opposed to the shop and tourist infested half that heads…

Suddenly Beethoven: A Visit to Városmajor and Kis-Sváb-Hegy

The newest installment of our investigation of Budapest’s outré places led us to that most outré of locations, The Square Formerly (and Forever) Known as Moszkva, from where a short walk allowed us to better inspect the city park going by the name of Városmajor. We’d of course often glanced Városmajor, either form a tram…

The March Random with Tulips, Ice Cream and the Sky

Right when I felt overjoyed that I had managed to sort all of last month’s pictures thematically, I realized that I still had several which were ‘orphaned’- shots I took randomly because I could (just so that I never pass by a good picture if it’s there) or ones which were born with the rather…

A (Not So) Bottomless Lake

Lake Feneketlen (Bottomless) has always been a Budapest mystery to me. Obviously it cannot, should not, must not be bottomless- though here we touch upon another thing I can’t do, which is swim properly, so in all honestly anything above 1.5 metres qualifies as bottomless to me, for if I cannot safely probe the ground…

The Probably Cherry Tree of Gellért Hill

All things considered, I was doing pretty well with my exploration of the lesser known Budapest project, resisting the easy temptations of Városliget and Margitsziget whenever the sun is shining. Actually, I do go to Margitsziget pretty much all the time, but no matter how I look at it, running with a DSLR is still…

Spring in the Buda Arboretum

We went into the weekend under the dark auspices of one of those classical Budapest weather forecasts, which claimed that we’d again have two miserable days before spring came back on Monday. But either spring was very stubborn, or the crystal globe was broken, because the sunshine soldiered on.  To fair to the meteorological institute,…

Saturday Starts at the Hunyadi Market

It might sound somewhat odd from someone who is particularly ill fitted for both haggling and cooking (I have an impression this blog is slowly turning into a litany of all the things I can’t do), but I have an irrational love of markets. Not that I buy much, see probable reasons above. I simply…