At Vigado Ter in
front of the big international hotels and flanking the Danube they have set up
a tourist market.
Here you can buy
lace, chessboards, T-shirts and leatherware from a large number of stalls.
Nearby is the pedestrianised square of Vorosmarty Ter with its showrooms, IBUSZ
and record shops - scalps/touts will hang around there trying to get tourists
interested in tours of Szendre of the Buda Hills?
But nearby Vaci Utca are the capitalist
showpiece street and probably the best shopping street in Hungary. Designer
shops, electronic shops, nightclubs and working girls line this street. But
also the international chains have moved in including Burger King and
McDonald's. Even the British have moved in on the act with a very popular Marks
and Spencers.
The great
boulevard of Pest is Andrassy Utca. It stretches from Opera over two miles to
the Varosliglet (City Park). This is often too much to walk so a handy subway
traverses its length ending at the vast Horos Ter (Heroes Square).
This is a vast
stone expanse with the Palace of Fine Arts on its south side and traffic
swirling around its perimeter. At the rear of the Ter, backing onto the
Varosliglet is a semi-circular colonnade decorated with statues of wicked
looking Magyar tribesmen on horses.
And behind that
it the verdant expanses of Varosliglet, worth visiting for Vajadunjad Castle. A
Transylvanian gothic fantasy with its own moat and drawbridge and one of the
best kept secrets of Budapest.
The evenings are good in Budapest. I headed back to Vaci Utca. There was 'Action Bar'. A complicated warren of a place where you had to buy one drink and you pay before you leave, T'he backroom is more famous - and I was spotted before I left. Temptations, temptations
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