Budapest Diaries - Margaret Island and Óbuda

Anyway, Sunday (day four) I slept in a little later than normal. The plan was to go to the Parliament building around 11 to get tickets for sometime in the afternoon. So I putzed around and did some planning for the rest of the my trip. When I got over to the Parliament there was already two long lines and neither were moving. I won't get into the details as to how their little system works but let's say "user friendly" is not a word I would use to describe it. After about twenty minutes a lady came out and said that the tickets were sold out for the day. I was a bit frustrated, but I had figured this was a possibility so I just planned to come back the next day.

The rest of the day was filled with spots that are not typical tourist destinations. Although Parliament didn't work out, I headed north towards Margaret Island. On the way I passed a building called the White House, the former headquarters of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Social Workers Party. Margaret Island is a shady island in the middle of the Danube, about 2 km from top to bottom. Most of the people you will see on the island are locals sunbathing on the shores, jogging or walking on the park's many paths, or riding around on a rented bicycle. If you are heading north, the first interesting thing you see is the Centennial Monument. It is an odd looking split-cone sculpture built in 1973 to celebrate the union of Buda, Pest, and Óbuda a hundred years earlier.

From there, there are a number of things to see on the island. There are some ruins of a Franciscan church and monastery. There is also an open-air theater which houses plays and opera during the warmer months. Next to the theater is the octagonal water tower. Which contains the lookout gallery. The tower as far as I can tell is not, nor has ever been, filled with water - but it does have a pretty good look over the island. From there lie more ruins, this time of a Dominican monastery best known for being the place where King Béla's daughter St. Margaret. Legend has it that Béla promised to commit his daughter to a life of devotion in a nunnery if Mongol invaders were defeated (as everyone knows, no sacrifice is as noble as the sacrifice you force others to make on your behalf). Going further north there is a reconstructed Premonstratensian Church. Other spots on Margaret Island include a Japanese garden and a musical fountain.

After my tour of Margaret Island, I headed westward towards Óbuda ("Old Buda") which is now a district of Budapest. I checked out the Óbuda Parish Church and the former Óbuda Synagogue. The main thing I wanted to see here was the Imre Varga Exhibition House. A number of sculptures throughout Budapest were designed by Imre Varga, including a neat set of women with umbrella's a block south of the museum (which is quite difficult to find, if I do say so). The Exhibition House itself was one of the gems of the day. I'm not always into the artsy-craftsy kind of stuff but the small building was full of some really great art. I was kind of surprised that there was nobody else here, but my impression is that most tourists who visit Budapest may only have a few days and Óbuda and Imre Varga do not make the top ten list.

After that I was headed south, basically towards the Castle District, to check out a few more out of the way places. This was definitely not a tourist spot, and few stores on the way were open this Sunday. The first noteworthy spot I ran into was a 2nd century Roman military amphitheater, which took up an entire block in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Apparently it was actually bigger than the Colosseum in Rome and could house up to 15,000 spectators. Today it only housed me, a large pile of trash, and a young woman sunbathing in a micro-thong. After that I went to find the tomb of Gül Baba, a poet and companion of Suleiman the Magnificant. The tomb itself appeared to be in a contest with the Imre Varga Exhibition House for the most-difficult-place-to-locate-in-Budapest award, and let me add that Gül Baba certainly could have chosen a far less steep incline on which to die. Anyway I made it and took a brief look around the tomb before heading off yet again.

I was getting tired at this point so there were only a few more stops. I checked out Millennium Park but after I realized there was pretty much nothing to do here other than a movie theater I moved on. By this time I was right next to the Castle District, and headed south along the eastern edge of the base from the Vienna Gate. I got a few snapshots of Fishermen's Bastion from down below and headed back home. On the way, I passed over the Széchenyi Bridge which was closed to traffic for some kind of street festival involving, well, mostly beer. It took a while to wade through, but I suppose it at least offered a few good people watching moments.