Thursday, Friday and Saturday

On Thursday we took the ferry (brill public transport system here) to Margaret Island and walked it's length looking at the (few) sights. As this took less time than anticipated we went on to walk around Varosliget park.

We plonked ourselves down in the grass to eat lunch by what should have been a lake but it was empty. Some cars and a lorry drew up on a little road nearby and 2 groups of people gathered; a group of portly men in suits and bow ties and a group of men and women in their twenties. There was a lot of debate and we watched with interest. The men then started opening boots and out came instruments, then the youngsters climbed in the lorry and emerged dressed in traditional costumes. Aha - some entertainment. Whilst they were faffing around we popped to check out the local spa bath for later this week. When we returned I was gutted to see the group packing up - we had only been gone 15 mins max, surely they hadn't only performed for a short time after all the preparation?

Luckily they were just regrouping in another area and the dancers were changing costumes (showgirls?) so we hung around to watch. However it turned out that that they were filming a movie rather than performing for the public. There was recorded music playing and they had to mime on each take.

Afterwards we walked through the city to see the Opera House, St Stephens church and the Parliament.  In Kossoth Square outside Parliament there was an exhibition about the dreadful events on October 1956 during the uprisings. Another sobering history lesson really well told.

There is a Spring Festival on in Budapest at the moment and we ended up at the folk music and food festival area.

We had a false start to our day on Friday with our tram disrupted due to roadworks and the bus we had planned to take to the Buda hills had been discontinued.  We re-thought our plans and took a tram up to join the Children's Railway which took us to the lookout point at the highest point in the hills, then we took the chairlift back down and a bus back. So it turned out to be a great day with super views once we had sorted our new route. The children do run the railway under adult supervision.

We returned to the food festival and I had a delicious elderflower cider.

Today we caught an intercity train which took us on a 50 minute ride out to Visegrad which is on the bend of the Danube. We hiked up to the castle for lovely views of the river and surrounding countryside.