Tosca @ Hungarian State Opera House

The night before we left Budapest, we saw an opera with my colleague A and her husband M at the Hungarian State Opera House (i.e., Magyar Állami Operaház).

We saw Tosca despite the giant display says Cosi fan tutte.

The foyer was very ornate, reminded us a little bit of Versailles (see pictures here).

Months in advance, A booked the tickets online but we were lucky that tickets were still available online just a few days before.

We picked up the tickets up just before the opera starts. The house was full.

The horseshoe-shaped, three-floored auditorium is intimate and a dazzling construct of red and gold.

It was built in nine years and completed in 1884. Miklós Ybl’s neo-renaissance palace has remained virtually unchanged in the 130 years.

The boxes are decorated with gilded balustrades and arm rests.

Between the boxes are dividing guardrails made from gilded tin and shaped to resemble leaves and the head of a Greek or Roman soldier.

The round ceiling is decorated with Károly Lotz’s monumental cupola fresco.

Refreshments during intermissions.

The buffet hall where patrons can drink, socialize and walk outside to a terrace overlooking the main street.

There were several couples, dressed elegantly or flamboyantly (depending on your sensibility) in formal wear, posing for selfies on the grand staircase.

While in NYC, we went to the opera occasionally. But we really enjoyed this performance of Puccini’s Tosca. These are our Mario, Floria and Baron Scarpia. Bravo.

If you are visiting Budapest, seeing an opera is a really enjoyable and affordable experience, and it was convenient since they have a helpful website.

The Bridges across the Danube, Budapest

The Danube is the longest river in the EU. We had no idea.

It originates from the Black Forest in Germany (see our post about it here) and travels southeast through four capitals before entering the Black Sea at the border of Romania and Ukraine. The four capitals are Vienna (see a sample of our posts about Vienna here), Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade. Now we have seen two of the four captials.

The river is known as Donau in Germany and Duna in Hungarian. We walked across it a couple of times, one time at night. It was very atmospheric as it was foggy.

There are at least 10 bridges that cross the Danube in Budapest. The most famous one is the Chain Bridge (Széchenyi Chain Bridge or Széchenyi lánchíd) which is in front of the Gresham Palace (click here to see the palace) on the Pest side of the river.

Designed by an English man and funded by a Greek merchant, it was the first permanent bridge across the Danube in Hungary, and was opened in 1849. It is famous for the lion sculptures.

On the Buda side, it is connected to Adam Clark Square, near the Zero Kilometer Stone and the lower end of the Castle Hill Funicular, leading to Buda Castle. We were just getting out of the tunnel beneath the Castle Hill Funicular.

The Buda Castle offers a panoramic view across the Danube of the Pest side of the city. We just found out that the banks of the Danube as well as the Buda Castle Quarter (where some of these pictures were taken) are both recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The Parliament on the bank of Duna

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Our one-day hop-on-hop-off tourist bus pass allowed us to go back and forth freely between Buda and Pest, hence all these pictures of the bridges.

Margaret Bridge (Margit híd)

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Elisabeth Bridge (Erzsébet híd)

Liberty Bridge (Szabadság híd)

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If one is to sail downstream from Bratislava to Budapest and then to Belgrade, the bridges that will be encountered are in order:  Margaret Bridge (Margit híd), Széchenyi Chain Bridge (Széchenyi lánchíd), Elisabeth Bridge (Erzsébet híd) and Liberty Bridge (Szabadság híd).

 

 

Pest-Buda, Buda, Budapest

We have a couple more posts about Budapest – recap – we were there in November last year for a long weekend … click here, here and here to see some samples of earlier posts.

Pest-Buda Vendéglő (Pest-Buda Inn) is located on the Buda side of the city. It is described in a local guidebook as the place to try traditional Hungarian dish made according to grandma’s recipe.

The hotel concierge gave us two options when asked about traditional fare, Pest-Buda was one of them.

A 10-minute taxi ride across the Chain Bridge and up the Castle Hill (Fortuna utca 3) brought us to this homey bistro restaurant.

Sue started with Goulash soup with Csipetke. The name Csipetke comes from pinching small, fingernail-sized bits out of the dough (csipet =pinch) before adding them to the boiling soup. Sue ordered goulash soup every chance she had and none were as good as Pest-Buda.

I ordered the Hungarian fish soup. It was one of the best I have ever tasted. I like bouillabaisse (see earlier post here) and cioppino and this soup tastes more like cioppino.

Hungarian goulash is the most famous and often cooked dish outside the borders of Hungary. So that’s what I ordered. Hungarian goulash is neither a soup nor a stew, it’s somewhere in between. Though in Hungary it’s considered a soup rather than a stew. Mine came with egg barley. A herd of cattle is gulya and herdsman is gulyás in Hungarian, so that’s where the dish’s name comes from.

 

We heard a lot of English in the restaurant. So we suspect that this is an establishment that caters to a lot of tourists but it is not touristy. While this is not where the locals go, we trust that the food is not too far off the authentic.

I had a glass of Hungarian Cabernet Franc (from Villány or Szekszárd, I can’t remember) which was tannic, robust and matched the goulash perfectly.

Sue ordered a chicken ragout with garlic potato. The garlic blended in with the other flavors very well. Both our main courses were very good, home-style comfort food, and strangely, neither one tasted particularly exotic or ethnic, even though we were very far from our homes.

Like every tourist who visits Hungary and buys paprika, we bought both sweet and spicy paprika powders as well as the sweet and spicy creams for making goulash which already contains some of the other species.

Now we have a reliable idea of how a goulash is supposed to look and taste like. Let’s see if we can replicate some aspects of it at home.

 

Bookcafé in Alexandra and the Vigadó, Budapest

Inside the branch of Alexandra bookstore located inside the now-defunct Paris Department Store (Párizsi Nagy Áruház, Andrássy út 39) is one of the more beautiful café in Europe. Click here for our post on the bookstore.

After entering the Alexandra Bookstore on the ground floor you’ll find a pair of escalators which bring you up to the first floor, and usher you directly in front of the Lotz Hall (Lotz-Terem).

The Lotz Hall (Lotz-Terem) was named after Karl Lotz who painted the murals inside the Alexandra Bookcafe, as well as those of the Budapest Opera, Hungarian Parliament, Hungarian National Museum, St. Stephens Basilica, the ceiling fresco in the Buda Castle and many many more.

International newspaper, live piano.

This man was a master of his craft, and the Hungarians loved him for it. While the rest of the building has been more or less whitewashed, the Lotz Hall has been faithfully restored and brought back to its former glory. It was the former Teresa City Casino ballroom.

The cafe hosts live music performance, as well as occasional demonstrations and book signings.

We did not stop for a coffee as it was already dinner time.

The national tricolor and Budapest red-yellow-blue flag made up of the various elements of the composition.

We have seen this neo-Renaissance (?) decorative style in the Parliament as well. Wonderfully ornate, but almost too shiny for us.

Many of these “restorations” look like new copies of the old style – rather than restoring actual old interior pieces.

Like the place we had our event dinner, the Vigadó concert hall – all the interior details were sparkling new. Here are a few pictures of the Vigadó which is the second largest concert hall in Budapest and was built in 1865. It hosted numerous performances by Lizst in the past.

We were at a private banquet in this place which seemed empty – presumably there was no public performance or ballroom dancing that evening. A folk band and a small trope of dancers entertained us during dinner.

The building suffered serious damage during World War II and it apparently took 30+ years to restore.

We have more photos of this type of interiors taken from the Parliament and the Opera House. May be we will put them up later.

Alexandra Bookstore, Budapest

Back in fall 2014, we spent a long weekend in Budapest, Hungary.  We have a couple more posts on this city before we put up photos from our Malaysian trip.

While strolling along Andrássy út (Budapest’s Fifth Avenue), we came across this building with a rather impressive facade. The combination of art nouveau motifs and dramatic lighting gave the facade a steampunk vibe and later reminded me (Chris) the set design in the movies Dune (1984) and Tyrell Corporation in Blade Runner.

Inside it, we found a branch of the Alexandra bookstore chain. It is one of Hungary’s biggest bookstore.

The Alexandra bookstore started off as a casino in 1884, and then become the Párizsi Nagy Áruház (Paris Department Store) in 1911. It was Budapest’s first building which was built specifically for retail purposes.

Planned and designed by Gustav Petschacher and Sigismund Sziklai, the Neo-Renaissance building – had a billiard and ballrooms on the first floor, playing and reading rooms on the second floor, while the third floor was constructed as luxury apartments.

It has a very modern-looking atrium but the atrium was in the original design.

The interior design – including the spectacular art deco fresco’s which have survived to this day. They were done by the “Prince of Hungarian Arts” Karl Lotz.

It has a high glass-vaulted ceiling, and had a glass-mirrored elevator (which we did not see).

The building somehow survived World War II and the communist period.

The Orco Property Group bought the building in 2005 and spent the next 4 years renovating the building.

When the building reopened on the 10th of November 2009, the first tenant was the Alexandra Bookstore, which took over the ground and first floor.

Click here to see their online bookshop in Hungarian.

 

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Our trips 2014 – part 1

Dear Readers, Happy New Year !

This is our first post of 2015. It is time to take a look back at some of the places we visited last year.

Some of you who knew me from New York probably think, judging from the posts here, that since we left for Switzerland, we travel a lot and do not spent much time on work. While it is true that I (Chris) get more vacation days per year now, workload is certainly heavier than before. So these vacations are really important counterbalances.

The photos are organized in reverse chronological order and there is a part 2 to come. Some of the trips are business trips and some are vacations.

There are usually a series of related posts per location, they are uploaded around the same time – you can discover them easily in the calendar at the bottom of the post.

December 2014 – Kuala Lumpur and Penang

We left on Christmas eve for Malaysia. The photos are being selected and touched up as we type.

Georgetown, Penang

 

Suria KLCC, Kuala Lumpur

 

December 2014 – Munich, Germany

 

October 2014 – Budapest, Hungary

 

September 2014 – Piedmont, Italy

 

September 2014 – Lac de Joue, Switzerland

 

August 2014 – Aosta, Italy

Near Aosta

 

July 2014 – London, England

Photos from first half of 2014 to come.

 

 

 

 

The Many Statues of Budapest

There appears to be lots of statues in Budapest …

The bronze sculpture of a military man (or policeman ?) below is located two blocks behind our hotel – the first one we saw which sparked us looking at many more we encountered later throughout the city. Every tourist who passes cannot resist taking a picture standing next to this life-size statute.

Budapest seems to have a lot of sculptures on its streets. Or at least they are highly visible to pedestrians. Certainly more than New York or London.

Nor are they hidden in a park or placed on a pedestal (some are).
Many of them are mingling with pedestrians in the street and being lit up at night.

This lion is one of four which are placed at the ends of the famous chain bridge (Széchenyi lánchíd) spanning the Danube, two on each side.

Not sure who they are and what they did.

… but there must be a story behind them

Among those that we saw, some are very modern and effective.

All straight lines and right angles (above) versus all curves (below).

“Hey, come over !”

There are so many of them at different locations and they are of such diverse styles. It is a very rich source of photographic materials.  Someone must have made (if not, someone should make) a coffee-table book of all the urban sculptures in Budapest.

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Írók Boltja, Budapest

Írók Boltja (Writers’ Bookshop) is located on the busy corner of Andrássy street No. 45 and Liszt Ferenc square. It is just down the street from the gigantic Alexandra (see later post).

The store is special because it has a history of more than a hundred years, always connected to writers and poets, and played a cultural role in the city.

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Originally a café (Café Japan), it functioned from the 1890s as a legendary gathering place for writers and intellectuals until it was transformed into a bookshop in the 1950s.

It now has a mezzanine floor where gatherings, book-signings, and talks can be held.

Literary figures are known to visit regularly, along with readers, authors, publishers, and occasionally Hungarian-challenged tourists like us drop in to look around.

The bookstore stocks mostly classical and contemporary Hungarian literary works, and some translations in English and other European languages.

Next door to it is a small shop that sells some touristy books and music, including sheet music. Here, we bought IT a small Christmas gift – which is a reprint of the first edition of the 1849 album-leaves by Ferenc Liszt for Princess Marie von Sayn-Wittgenstein (Emléklapok Marie von Sayn-Wittgenstein hercegkisasszony számára). It was auctioned in 1926, passed through the hands of several private collectors and published for the first time in 2000.

If you are curious about Hungarian books, their online store is here.

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Bordó Bisztró, Budapest

We ate our first dinner here by ourselves after Chris’s conference ended. It was Halloween weekend.

The bistro is located at the corner of Nagymező Street and Király Street, a block or so from Andrássy út in the center of Budapest.

We avoided a whole line of clearly touristy establishments on Liszt Ferenc tér (friendly host offering English menu, similar dishes with similar prices) and quickly ran into this place.

It was rather early when we first arrived. But it quickly turned into a lively place full of people having a bite before going out on a Friday night.

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The place is converted from a concrete printing house with an interesting multi-level layout.

On weekends, it hosts bands and DJs.

The printing house had a red floor, hence the name Bordó meaning claret.

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Great ambiance but the food is not its forté. Nor did we expect it. It was priced fairly.

Glad to have come across this place. We think someone should compile a short list of such non-touristy restaurants which are located in the touristy areas of major cities.

 

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il Bacio di Stile, Budapest

After my (Chris) business meetings, we stayed behind and spent a weekend in Budapest.

We were strolling through downtown Budapest on Halloween Friday night and came across this high-end fashion department store  – il Bacio di Stile.

The store was throwing a Halloween party – Spooky Friday – and would open till 10pm. Not a word of Hungarian on this poster.

Perhaps we should not be so surprised by the global reach of American culture. After all, vampires and Count Dracula lived just next door in Transylvania – which was a part of Hungary, and is now in Romania.

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On the sidewalk, … loungy-clubby music, flashing lights, and warm spiced wine served by costumed employees to passers-by…

il Bacio di Stile is located on the main shopping street – Andrássy út – which is the Champs-Élysées of Budapest – the city itself sometimes referred to as the Paris of the East – considering that in the pre-World War II era, Eastern European capitals are just as rich and glamorous.

This store is a clone of Barneys in NYC, a tad bigger than Louis in Boston but smaller than Harvey Nichols or Le Bon Marché.

The pale color of the atrium reminded me of Le Bon Marché (see our post here about Les Grands Magasins.)

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Since it sells only designer clothes, adopting an Italian name meaning “Kiss of Style” definitely helps its image.

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The night was young, although it was dark outside. The shop was practically empty – all the party-goers were still getting ready with their costume.

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The DJ was working hard … trying to get our attention …

The walkways across the atrium make great people-watching spots.

A few tall skinny girls, probably models, were circling the entrance as we were leaving. It would have been interesting to see the people in costumes but by that time, we wanted dinner.

Happy Halloween !

The store’s web site is here: http://www.ilbaciodistile.com/

 

 

Four Seasons Hotel at Gresham Palace, Budapest

In October, I(Chris) attended a business conference in Budapest at the Four Seasons Hotel. Sue joined me and we stayed for a couple of extra days to see the city. Neither one of us has been to Hungary before.

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The meetings were held in this historical Art Nouveau building in the center of Budapest.  It is located along the River Danube, adjacent to Széchenyi Square and the eastern terminus of the Széchenyi Chain Bridge.

According to the hotel’s web site:

In 2004, after a five-year $110-million restoration, the Hotel was unveiled. Some of the Hotel’s outstanding features are a two million-piece mosaic tile floor, a grand, sweeping staircase, stained-glass floors, and a wrought iron elevator that have each been lovingly restored or replicated when preservation wasn’t possible. In the process of reconstruction, the Hotel was also completely modernized, adding amenities like an indoor lap pool, spa, fitness facilities and all the latest internet and entertainment equipment.

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One end of the “arcade”-like lobby area is used as a cafe.

The mosaic floor is beautiful and kept spotless. There is an art nouveau floral pattern that is used on all the floor coverings.

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The stained glass ceiling, skylight and sculpture in the lobby was stunning at dusk – the cool residual winter sunligh mixing the warmer interior lights.

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Our room was unremarkable compared to the lobby and the exterior.

The indoor lap pool and gym are located on the “attic” floor under a sloping roof, accessible via a set of glass stairs (à la Apple store).

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This is indeed a beautifully renovated hotel with a central convenient location. One of the best places to stay while visiting Budapest.

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