Budapest & Surroundings Travel Adventures 2nd Ed. / Hunter Publishing (ePub)

Here is a brand new 2nd edition that has been fully updated. The author is a long-time resident of Budapest, who knows the region intimately and takes us behind the scenes to discover its best features the sights, the places to stay and eat, the shopping, and all the activities. Millions of people every year hike into, bike, drive or climb into the green valleys and limestone mountain ridges of Hungary s national parks and the hills. Storks, eagles, wrens, blackbirds, woodpeckers, and flocks of thousands make their home in forests, grasslands, and cliff-sides. Majestic antlered stags and deer range the forest. Fresh springs and cold clear creeks tumble down from the mountains. The author takes us there. There are thousands of restaurants and virtually every type of cuisine. Hotels and nightspots are just as numerous and the author guides us to the best of them all. As you walk through the Budapest, you will find literally thousands of statues and monuments. Rose-tinted sunsets and shadowed romance reflect on the Danube, mirroring this city, which has been called the Paris of Eastern Europe and The Pearl of the Danube. The home of two million of the nation's 10 million people, it is the center of Hungary's culture, science, industry, and government. There are three basic areas: Buda (including Gellért Hill and Castle Hill), Pest (including District 5 - also known as the Belváros, and City Park), and Óbuda (the largest Roman ruins outside of Rome). Before Christ, fearsome Celts occupied Gellért Hill, the central mountain whose mammoth like shoulders rise from the Danube shore to dominate Buda (site of the imposing Citadel, Freedom Statue, Gellert Statue, lookout points, winding paths and bathhouses). Late in the first century AD the Romans marched in to establish Aquincum, the capital of the province of Pannonia. North of Gellért Hill, in what is today Óbuda, it is the site of extensive Roman ruins. For generations the Romans would contend with Goths and then Huns for the domination of the Danube. After Rome had vanished, Buda remained, and in the 13th century construction spread in earnest to Pest, on the other side of the river. Yet the bloodthirsty advance of the Tartars revealed the tragic vulnerability of Pest's flat land. It was with urgent desperation that the population built on the terraced, more defensible Castle Hill. The Christened Buda Castle was destined to be one of the great centers of Renaissance resurgence. But, in spite of her tumultuous history, building and rebuilding, Budapest developed an exciting character unlike any in Europe, combining Victorian, Gothic, medieval, and modern influences, spiced with Turkish, Macedonian, Slavic, Hungarian, German, and Russian cultures. Amidst it all, the gusto of her people wove energy and melancholy on gypsy violins, love, and the romantic Danube, into the cultural Mecca she is today. This is by far the most detailed guide to the area, including everything there is to see and do. And it is illustrated with hundreds of color maps and photographs.