To cut a long story short, we bought three day transport tickets so that we could travel around town easily and so that Ches could avoid walking as her hips are really playing up.
The Budapest Metro (Hungarian: Budapesti metró) is the rapid transit system in the Hungarian capital Budapest. It is the oldest electrified underground railway system on the European continent, and the second-oldest in the world, predated only by the 1890 City & South London Railway (now part of the London Underground).[6] Its iconic Line 1, completed in 1896, was declared a World Heritage Site in 2002.[7][8]

The first metro line was conceived as a means of carrying passengers from the city centre to the City Park without the need for surface transport on Andrássy Avenue. The Diet of Hungary approved the metro project in 1870. Construction began in 1894 and was carried out by the German firm Siemens & Halske AG, employing 2,000 workers using state-of-the-art machinery. The line was built entirely from the surface using the cut-and-cover method.[citation needed]

This original metro line followed a northeast-southwest route along Andrássy Avenue from Vörösmarty Square, in the centre of the city, to the City Park and Zoo (Széchenyi fürdõ), a distance of 3.7 kilometres (2.3 mi).[13] There were a total of eleven stations on the line, with nine underground and two above-ground; the original terminus at the Zoo has since been supplanted (by Mexikói út station, further to the northeast, in 1973). With trains running every two minutes, the line was then capable of carrying up to 35,000 passengers per day. One of the original Budapest Metro cars has been preserved at the Seashore Trolley Museum.[citation needed] Original carriages can also be seen in the Underground Railway Museum at Deák Ferenc tér station[14]


The metro worked perfectly for us over two days. Today however we only used it to travel the two stops to cross from the Buda side to the Pest side. Note, not from Buda to Pest; it's one city.

We didn't exactly do Ches's hips any favours as we walked the length of Vaci Utca, the main shopping boulevard (make that mall). We didn't actually buy anything. When we came to the end of the street, we crossed to the Market Hall. It's very much like Melbourne's Victoria Market or Adelaide's markets. Here it seemed as though half the shops sold meat products and half sold fruit and veg. Upstairs on the mezanine was morre like Paddy's Markets clothing stalls and a long line of fast food stands. This was a bunfight and when Ches discovered thast they would take Euro's but only give change in HUF, we decided it wasn't worth the effort.

We were right because back across the street we found another Anns's Cafe where we found a table in the sun and enjoyed a beer. Ches had a toasted sandwich and I had venison in a rich gravy. We watched other tourists ... thats always fun.

We then went in search of the Synagogue. The Dohány Street Synagogue (Hungarian: Dohány utcai zsinagóga/nagy zsinagóga, Hebrew: בית הכנסת הגדול של בודפש 96;‎ bet hakneset hagadol šel budapešt), also known as The Great Synagogue or Tabakgasse Synagogue, is a historical building inErzsébetváros, the 7th district of Budapest, Hungary. It is the largest synagogue in Europe[1] and one of the largest in the world. It seats 3,000 people and is a centre of Neolog Judaism. The synagogue was built between 1854 and 1859 in the Moorish Revival style, with the decoration based chiefly on Islamic models from North Africa and medieval Spain (the Alhambra). The synagogue's Viennese architect, Ludwig Förster, believed that no distinctively Jewish architecture could be identified, and thus chose "architectural forms that have been used by oriental ethnic groups that are related to the Israelite people, and in particular the Arabs".[2] The interior design is partly by Frigyes Feszl.

The Dohány Street Synagogue complex consists of the Great Synagogue, the Heroes' Temple, the graveyard, the Memorial and the Jewish Museum, which was built on the site on which Theodore Herzl's house of birth stood. Dohány Street itself, a leafy street in the city center, carries strong Holocaust connotations as it constituted the border of the Budapest Ghetto.[3]

Again we came unstuck with currency. They would only accept HUF. We were already stuck with useless RON (Romania), which no one wanted and weren't prepared to add HUF to the collection. We therefore had to settle for sitting outside and taking in the unusual fascade. Actually an beautiful fascade as you would have gathered from the description above.

We weere ready for some slow down time, so we walked back to the metro and headed home. Ches finally lucked out and found a stand in the metro that sold the large tubular donuts; crushed walnut on one and cinamon on the other. We sat in the park near home to finish them off and at home later ate a cabbage pasty followed by an apple and an apricot and cottage cheese pastry. All were kind of like a strudel.