Most of the day was exploring the Buda side of Budapest today.

Mamfa did a run along the river which is a great scenic route.

Started however on the Pest side with being the first visitors to the top of the St Stephen’s Basilica tower which was very peaceful.

After I rubbed the tummy of the fat policeman for luck, we took a 1hr cruise along the Danube River with great views of each side and around Margaret Island.

We walked over the Chain Bridge (another reconstruction due to German bombing) to Buda and up to the Fisherman’s Bastion with its great views back over Pest.

Adjacent to this was the very impressive Matthias Church, both inside and out.

We then joins a 2hr walking tour of the precinct with a few sites to view on the way.

The walk ended at the Buda Castle precinct which has been basically completely re-built in stages to reflect its pre-war state. The buildings all look like historical stone buildings but they are reinforced concrete with stone facades. They do look great though and maintains the history of the site. The Castle has a great museum which takes a meandering path through ballrooms, state rooms, cellars of various styles.

The National Gallery was next door which had the usual mix of some interesting modern art and boring paintings and a mix in between.

There are however some great views from the front of the gallery.

After a quick ride on the Castle Bus we had a break to catch our breath.

We almost stayed in after that but heard about the musical fountain show on Margaret Island so we headed out again to check it out. Margaret Island is ~2km long in the middle of the river and is a beautiful park with huge trees and great gardens. We walked the length as the sun was setting and it is obviously a local favourite place.

The highlight of the day and Budapest was the musical fountain show. It consisted of nearly an hour of both modern popular music and classical favourites with the fountains set in time. Fantastic colour, movement and sound. The audio on the videos below don’t really capture how good it was. For a free event that is on every night, it was magical – blown away by it!

This day in sporting history (17 July)

1976 21st modern Olympic games opens in Montreal: 25 African teams (later rising to 33 nations) boycott the games due to New Zealand playing rugby in apartheid South Africa