Tues, July 29: Parliament and Opera House

We woke up tired but ready to go. Breakfast at our hotel is awesome. I had fruit, eggs, salmon lox, yogurt, tea and coffee, bread and Brie. Basically a feast, and at 10 in the morning. We headed to parliament to book tickets for a guided tour. There were spots available in the 2 o'clock tour, so to pass a couple hours until then we walked to Andrássy Út, the so called "Champs-Élysées of Budapest". The street was big and had really nice stores, plus the Opera House stands on the street. We booked tickets there too for a 4 o'clock tour and a five minute opera concert. We walked back to see parliament. Parliament is one of the biggest parliaments of the world, and was completed in 1902 after 17 years of construction. From September to June, 199 members of Parliament meet to vote. In 1944, the two houses, the House of Lords and House of Commons, were abolished and the meetings were held as one. The highest dome stands at 96 m high, symbolic of the year the Hungarians settled  (896). The dome in St. Stephen's basilica is also this high, symbolizing the equality of church and state.

Parliament

After our tour, we couldn't stand the idea of walking back yet again, and in a surprising move, decided to take a taxi. Let me tell you, this never happens. The Apodacas always walk. It was a nice break though, despite the fact that the driver most likely gypped us. If he did though, it was clever, because the meter was running. We had a quick drink at a cafe and then went to see the opera house. We had our tour in Spanish because the Spanish speaking group was smaller than the English speaking group. We had a Hungarian tour guide who spoke great Spanish. We learned that the opera house was built by Miklós Ybl and opened in 1884. The Hapsburg emperor Franz Josef funded most of it, but he only visited once. What was most interesting to me was the actual opera concert hall. It's completely covered in gold detailing, but they only used 3 kg of gold. They do this by painting with an incredibly thin layer of gold.

We bought tickets for a "mini opera" and saw a guy perform a few nice emotional pieces. It was really a good time. We walked right next door to the beautiful Opera Cafe. Even though the inside of the cafe was beautiful, it was empty so we sat outside. Jack, les and pato had "opera cake" and I had a chocolate cake, and we all had hot chocolate.

Our walk to the hotel wasn't too bad, and we got to see a new area of town. After resting for a bit, we went back out to dinner. It almost doesn't count as "going out" because it was about 10 feet from the hotel. We were excited to try Russian food and Les and Pato had some vodka. The menu didn't have a lot of choices, but what we ordered turned out to be wonderful. We were completely surprised when our food came out. We had been expecting inelegant Russian food, but our plates all came out looking like art. It was by far the most refined cuisine we'd tried all trip, and it was delicious! We questioned the authenticity (did Russians really eat delicate slivers of duck breast atop a little hill of potato purée?) but were completely delighted by this nouveau cuisine. Our walk across the street was quite nice ;)