First stop, the opera house, which was next door to our hotel.
Tickets for an opera-ballet combination, "C'est la guerre" and "The Tricky Students," were $12 each.

St. Stephen's Cathedral.
  stephen.jpg

The Gresham Palace is on the river, facing Buda. It was obviously once a grand building in the Secession Style but is now a wreck (it's going to be turned into a Four Seasons Hotel).

The first picture looks across the Danube to the hills of Buda and St. Matthew's Church. Up the hill on the other side is the National Gallery (the old Palace), which houses a marvelous art collection. There is some important Hungarin Secession work here--e.g., Rippl-Ronai. The first photograph is the Elizabeth Bridge (but maybe that's not the right name), the lions on the Pest side; the second picture is the bridge from the funicular that goes up the hill into the old city of Buda.

From the National Gallery, overlooking the Parliament buildings in Pest.

The statue of King Stephen outside St. Matthew's Church, on the Buda crest overlooking Pest.

The church of St. Matthew.  matchr2.jpg  matmem1.jpg

Much is written about the synagogue; it is newly restored, but we found it closed, with only the museum open, and then on limited hours. We were never sure if we were looking at the World War I memorial we read about; the Holocaust memorial is behind bars.

The Central Food Market is one of the great sights of Budapest.

The Museum of Applied Arts, where we saw a first-rate exhibition of Secession furniture, glass, and other art.

One of the city's nicest cafés caught us in a good mood on our last day there.

We remember this street because we were accosted by police who tried to shake us down for US currency; someone was asking us for directions (a ruse) and his buddies, not really police, we think, claimed to be protecting us. They actually looked in our wallets (which we showed them because we knew they were empty)!