Budapest: Did I Mention The Rain?

[smallhobbit]

Our second full day in Budapest began okay, but it wasn't long before it was raining again.  The Danube remained resolutely grey:



We ended up at Margrit Island, which is an island in the middle of the Danube.  That wasn't where we had been heading, but having got near there and knowing we wanted to visit the island we stopped.  It's a lovely place, very peaceful and the only vehicles aloud are buses and those with a pass.  There's a musical fountain, the waters of which move in time to the music, which is lovely.  And there are the ruins of a Franciscan monastery and a Dominican convent.

   

But we were getting very tired of being wet, so we hopped on the bus and stayed on until it reached its destination (the railway station), where we took the metro back to the hotel.

Fortunately the rain stopped by the evening.  When we'd been visiting the Zeneakademia we'd bought tickets to one of their concerts.  There'd been a number available, including a free concert of Beethoven piano sonatas, but I suggested we go for a more Hungarian concert.  So we went to Kalman Balogh's 60th birthday concert.  Balogh plays the cimbalom (a Hungarian instrument, which has metal strings and is played by what, from a distance, looks like two paint brushes).  Part of the time was two cimbalom together, and part of the time there was a gypsy band, which was great.  It was a long concert, so we slipped out at the interval, but since we'd only paid about £5 each for our tickets we weren't worried.

This is taken from the inside of the Great Concert Hall:

 

And these are outside, showing the statue of Liszt:

  

 

Comments

[smallhobbit]

We'd have spent more time there if we weren't both thoroughly tired of being wet. There was more we'd have liked to see.