Day 12 - Pest

We got up and went down to the restaurant in the hotel for a Hungarian breakfast.  It was somewhat surprising.  Scrambled eggs and French toast were familiar.  Then there 12 types of cheese, 15 types of bread, four types of fish, stewed vegetables, and another dozen things I didn't even recognize.  It was interesting that they also had desert for breakfast.  So I had to try a little piece of cheese cake. 

Now that we were charged up, we headed for the internet cafe to check the e-mail.  The cafe was supposed to open 30 minutes before we got there but no one was there and the gate was locked.  His loss, we pressed on to the Parliament for the tour.  Nancy waited in line for almost an hour to buy a ticket, then we waited 40 minutes for our scheduled tour to start.  The building was very nice and the English speaking guide told us a lot about the history of the building.  After getting out of there we stopped for a torte and expresso and I had a coke. ($7)  Then we headed to Liberty Square, to St Stevens, and then to the opera house.

St, Steven's church is an excellent example of opulent design.  Marble and gold leaf, and then more of everything, statues, frescos, and a separate chapel with the right hand of St Steven on display as a "relic."  The building is beautiful and the form and design reminded me of the Roman buildings we saw in Italy.  Pictures just don't really do the place justice.  While it is not as grand a St. Paul's in Rome… it gives you the same feeling.

The opera house tour (in English at 1500) was interesting.  The mini operatic concert was an extra 500 Florins each and the photography license was another 500 Florins.  ( I think she had x-ray vision and could tell how much cash I had.)  The opera building is beautiful and the history is pretty amazing, The  building is 140 years old and never had a fire or got bombed in two world wars or the 1956 revolution.   So, almost all the building is original.  The architect was very forward thinking.  It was the first building of its size to have central heating an cooling.  There are vents below each seat to provide airflow and hot air is vented out the top of the dome by convection.  Central cooling was provided by big blocks of ice which would cool outside air by 4 or 5 degrees to make the opera more comfortable.  When refrigeration air conditioning was invented it was easy to retrofit and it became the first air conditioned opera in the world.

We hopped a bus back to the tram, then took the tram back toward the hotel.  While were looking for a pay-as-you-go SIM card for the phone we found St Michaels was having a concert that night.  We went to a pizza place, we found walking around before, for dinner.  It was good and reasonable.  Dinner with desert for two was 3210 Florins or about $15.  Then we figured out that they had free WiFi and used the iPhones to Skype and check the e-mail.  

While we ate we decided to go to the concert.  But, I had to get more cash.  With Florins you feel like you are spending a lot of money… the concert was 13,000 Florins or about $65 for both of us.  The church is an  odd mix of old an new.  Repairs were sometimes uneven, and there was no stained glass in any window.  There were areas that clearly were still needing repair.  But, when the string orchestra started playing I understood why this was the location chosen for the concert.  The smaller church had beautiful acoustics and each note was deep and rich and vibrant. Just hearing the beautiful sound in that building was worth half the price of admission.  The program by the Duna String Orchestra easily covered the other half:

J. Pachebel  Canon

A. Vivaldi  The Four Seasons - Winter

J. S. Bach  Air

G. F. Haendel  Water Music

A. Vivaldi  Gloria (three movements)

W.A. Motzart  A Little Night Music

A. Dvorak  Slavonic Dances

E. Grieg  Holsberg Suite (Prelude, Sarabande, Air)

F. Liszt  Hungarian Rhapsody

And, that was the end of our day in Pest, tomorrow it is off to Buda on the other side of the Danube.