It was a great relief finally to arrive at Ferenc Liszt Airport in Budapest. Ferenc, by the way, is the Hungarian form of the German name Franz, by which the composer is usually known, and as far as I can tell it is pronounced the same way. Since we were late, there was no one to meet us at the airport, but we called the Gate1 Tour Director, Krisztina, who arranged transport to our lodgings.
In Budapest we spent our first two nights, the 14th and 15th of June, in the Hotel Corinthia, one of the best hotels I’ve ever stayed in. Opened in 1896 as the Grand Hotel Royal, it has been through many ups and downs. In the early years, prior to World War I, it was the favorite haunt of the Hungarian literati and beau-monde. The great Hungarian composer Béla Bartók conducted concerts in the ballroom, and later a cinema was established there, which continued to operate until 1997. However, the hotel itself fell upon evil days after the Second World War. It was completely rebuilt in the 1950s and reopened in 1961. In 1991 it closed again, and was eventually revived with a 100-million-euro investment by the Corinthia Group, a Malta-based investment subsidiary of International Hotels, Inc. Although nothing of the original interior remains, the current furnishings still convey an atmosphere of fin-de-siecle luxury and opulence. And it couldn’t be faulted for comfort, either.
Our first impressions of Budapest were of a city of great beauty and great contrast. The contrast, of course, is between the old, represented mostly by the 18th and 19th-century inheritance, and the new, mostly dating from the post-1989 period, because most of the Communist-era appurtenances have been redone or removed. I’ve culled a few photos from some of our excursions over the succeeding days to provide abundant illustration of both the beauty and the diversity.
It’s important to keep in mind that Budapest began as two cities, one on either side of the Danube. (Actually there was a third, Obuda or Old Buda, just north of Buda, but let’s not complicate matters unnecessarily.) The Danube flows south at this point, and Buda is on the west bank, Pest on the east. Buda is hilly, Pest is flat. The two existed as separate cities for hundreds of years before being joined as one in 1867.
The next post will delve deeper into the sights we saw on our first full day in Budapest, Thursday the 15th of June 2023.