Travel Stop: Hungary Part 2; Szentendre, Visegrad, Esztergom, Slovakia

Why thank you! Our first stop was a city called Szentendre, or St Andrew. When the Tursks invaded Hungary, one of the things they brought with them was paprika. Now, paprika is a major part of Hungarian dishes and you can find it everywhere. They hang it on the walls to dry.

 Szentendre is an artisans town, and so all along the street you can find shops with traditional Hungarian art and artifacts. There are also a lot of museums. We saw the one museum called Mikroart Museum. It's a museum with art you can really only see though a high powered lens. I mean, they create images on the end of a human piece of hair. It's that tiny and it's AWESOME.

Example of Micro art. That's the eye of a needle!

Here are examples of  typical small streets in the city. The streets can keep you cool in the summer and the narrowness can protect you when an enemy comes to attack.

The city has three parts to it. A Serbian part, a Greek part, and a Turkish part. All three used to reside here in their separate quarters. Below you can see part of the Serbian area. It generally has higher roofs. The shops are on the bottom level and the owners lived on the first floor, much like you see today. They didn't have cellars, instead they had attics, which is why the roofs are higher.

Most Serbians were Orthodox, and here is an example of an Orthodox Church. There are seven churches total in Szentendre, and four of them are Orthodox.

This is a picture of the Greek Street in Szentendre, and fittingly, it's called Greek Street. The Greeks handled most of the wine in the area so this street leads down to the Danube river.

Picture of part of the Serbian quarter.

Here is another picture of the square. You can see a column in the middle. That column commemorates people who died from the plague in the middle of the 17th C. Because it's an Orthodox stature there are no figures, just that of a cross.

Here is a view of the Danube and in the distance you can see an island. It's 31km long (19.2iles). It's known for strawberries because there are many many strawberry fields on it. At the end of May, they have big festivals there, with traditional Hungarian clothing, Strawberry wine, cake, and music.

Here we have the first church of the city, the St Andrew church. It was built in the 11th C and because it was in the oldest part of the city, it is surrounded by a wall. It is a Catholic church.

The red church in the back is the Belgrade church, named after the capital of Serbia. It is an Orthodox church. In the 18th C about 8000 Greek and Serbian families lived in Szentendre, but after the First World War they immigrated back to their countries. Only about 60 families remained. As I mentioned earlier, there are four Orthodox churches here, but only tho remain open for the families that remain.






I showed you a little of the Serbian and Greek parts, and here is a picture of the Turkish part. If you couldn't tell...

At the end of Turk Street you find the St Peter's church.

Let me tell you how much I love this photo. This is our tour guide explaining the bust in the background. It is the bust of a famous Hungarian author who was born in 1822. Did I catch his name? No, because it was a bit hard with these dudes in the car revving their engine loudly.

Here we have the Marzipan museum. It's like Madame Toussaud's, except instead of wax they use marzipan. They life sized figures like Michael Jackson and also fairy tale figures and buildings.

Main street in Szentendre.

After Szentendre we moved onto a town called Visegrad. It was a Kingdom in the middle ages and Louis the Great was born here. He was King of Hungary and Croatia and Poland in the 14th C.

Before we got to Visegrad we passed through what is know as a fisherman's village. The houses are usually long and small with one window in the front and one in the back. The reason is originally they had to pay tax on the number of windows facing the main street, so that's why there's only one in the front. The kitchen, the warmest place, is located in the middle.

Then we arrived at the watch tower and there was a band to greet us! Actually, not really. They were there for another group. They greeted them in the parking lot and marched them down to the watchtower. 

All those iPads.

At the bottom you can see Solomon's watchtower. Not the King Solomon from the bible though. This Solomon was from the 11th C.  The watchtower you see now was built in the 15th C. Count Dracula was imprisoned here for 12years by King Matthias. You can also see the old defense walls. Ships would stop here passing along the Danube to pay toll.

I showed you one island famous for strawberries, this one in the distance was famous for raspberries.

Here below is the restaurant where we ate. You could see a view of the Visegrad Castle from the dinig area. Visegrad means, high castle. It's about 350m above sea level.

Visegrad Castle

In the area is what is called the Danube Bend, The river bends twice and creates a double 's'. The weather wasn't so great so you can't really see, but here is a picture of where the Danube starts to bend.

Our last stop was a city called Esztergom. During the Roman times Marcus Aurelius and his legions were stationed here while fighting the barbarian hordes. He wrote his Meditations here as well. After the Romans the Barbarians lived here, the Huns, Ostrogoths, then the Franks in the 7th C. The ancient Hungarians conquered it in the late 9th C, 896 AD. It was the first capital of Hungary.

Here is a picture of the cathedral in Esztergom. It is the largest in Hungary and was built in the Neoclassical style 1822-1856. About 65% of Hungarians are Catholic. The statue in front is a statue of Mary wearing a crown and holding a scepter.  

The reason that Mary is wearing a crown and holding a scepter is the St Stephan, the first King of Hungary, was born here. He had one son, but hos son was killed in a hunting accident. He had no other heirs so he decided to offer the Hungarian crown to Mary.

Statue of Mary

This is the organ in the church. It is the 2nd largest organ in the Europe. It has 9000 different pipes. The biggest organ is in a church in Passau, Germany. That organ has 13,000 pipes. Ther eare plan to enlarge this organ here in Hungary to 11,000 pipes, keeping it the second largest in Europe.

The famous musician and composer Franz Liszt came here and composed a mass for inauguration in 1856. Also Pope John Paul came here in 1995 and conducted services.

The painting in the back is one of the largest paintings in the world. You can't really see it here, but it is massive. It's about 13 meters wide and 7 meters high. (42 ft wide, 22 ft high). It was painted by an artist named Grigoletti and is actually an enlargement of a Titian.

Here you can see what's behind the church. Across the river is Slovakia.

We crossed the bridge into Slovakia. Now we are in Slovakia looking at the Cathedral from the back.

That was the end of our day trip. The drive back was not exciting and it was raining. But I'm definitely happy to have gone on this trip to see more than just Budapest.