Budapest Spring Music Festival March 2011 - Days Six & Seven

We walked through the back streets past the St. Elizabeth Church to the Liszt Museum, which was not quite where it was marked on the map! He had a much larger flat here than in Weimar & there were a lot of memorabilia & pianos plus two harmonia (harmoniums?)

Liszt' flat, 1st floor, corner towards us

Aspects of Liszt over the years

We walked down to the Liszt Institute, a huge music school but there was obviously no special show despite the anniversary.

Liszt outside the Academy

Liszt Academy

Liszt statue on the Academy

We took the tube to Hero Square but the modern art gallery was closed & the fine art, relatively expensive, so we tubed to Deak Square & took the little bus up the Buda hill. After coffee, we walked South through the royal palace area, which is pretty huge, to the end & back, taking the little bus back down a bit too far.

Buda Royal Palace, West to East

Then, we walked to the Danube bank & found a restaurant which served Hungarian food. This was not as cheap as yesterday's but still only £23 food & beers. We carried on to the next bridge & took the bus back. Bus stops are fairly rare & we had to go to the station & walk back from there, getting back at 1508. We had a siesta until 1655, then showered & joined the crowd for the tram to Bela Bartok Hall for an all-Mozart concert, not normally my idea of fun but we had a symphony to start each half (34, although Don had promised 41 & 35). Then Thomas Quasthoff sang two Mozart arias each time plus Sarastro as an encore. One tends to think of Sarastro as a giant figure & Quasthoff was a Thalidomide victim, so it almost seemed cruel to call him to totter out for his well-deserved curtain calls but that is the name of the game. It was really warm today & I just went in my sports jacket. Avis & many of the old girls brought out their fuck-me dresses.

Day Seven. Going home day but we were not to forgather until 1215, so after a vaster than usual breakfast, we packed & took the bus to near the river, then walked up to Eotvos Square but it was very cold because of the wind & despite the Sun, so we took a tram to the Margaret Bridge & walked back to Parliament. Although the wind was now behind us, it was still cold, so we had coffees & tube back, getting to the hotel at 1145. I did thus manage to get a photo of the Imre Nagy Memorial. There was a lot of fooling around to get a group photo & I am sure that some people managed to dodge it. Goodness knows what is going to appear in the U3A News.

A last look round: Castle Hill, Buda; Parliament Building; Imre Nagy Statue (1956 Revolution Prime Minister, hanged in Russia)