Budapest

I have just spent a very pleasant three days in Budapest. It was my first visit to Hungary and I was impressed with the architecture, and the friendly and helpful people. Everyone we spoke to could speak English, which was just as well as my Hungarian leaves much to be desired.

The Great Market Hall is one of the places you should see, and will be covered in a separate post.
We enjoyed the trip around the Hungarian Parliament, but not the queue beforehand to get a ticket (free if you remember to take an EU passport).

In case you're concerned that the Gothic revival style architecture does not look quite right in my picture, I should point out that this photo was taken in the Marzipan Museum.

The model of the Budapest parliament weighs 8okg and took four months to make!

Amongst other exhibits in the museum was a giant wedding cake made with 1,400 eggs! It doesn't seem quite right to me to use food for something that is not going to be eaten, when there are so many hungry people in the world.

I've included a photo of the famous Széchenyi Chain Bridge, the first bridge to link Buda with Pest across the river Danube.

The bridge was designed by English engineer William Tierney Clark, and is based on Clark's earlier Marlow Bridge, built across the River Thames. The construction was supervised by a Scottish engineer Adam Clark, who later on went on to marry a Hungarian girl and settled down in Hungary.


Needless to say the Marzipan museum had a copy of this bridge.

The museum has a shop where you can buy various things made in marzipan and a marzipan liqueur.
















Marzipan is very popular in Hungary, apparently there's also a Marzipan museum in Szentendre where they have a model of Michael Jackson.

According to a You Tube video I watched, it's very easy for them to remodel his marzipan nose....