On Margaret Island

See what I did there with the title?  Blatant Neutral Milk Hotel reference, in case you didn't know.  Just like the name of my blog.

Anyway, to get to the point, we spent Sunday exploring Margaret Island, which is like the Central Park of Budapest.  It was pretty awesome.  The bridge connecting the Island to Buda and Pest is currently under construction, so we had to walk across the bridge rather than taking the tram.  Interestingly enough, we encountered a group of Waldos, like from "Where's Waldo?"


So we get on the island, and the first thing that catches our eye is this crazy space-pod-like statue thing.


As we continued our journey on the island, we realized how long it has been since we've seen so many trees up close.  At least, so many green trees, since most of the vegetation in the city is scarce and dead, as it is still rather wintery here.  It was lovely.  And there were huge fields and open spaces and the air was fresh and it smelled so sweet, which is strange to say because I've heard that description of air before but never really understood it.  I guess after almost a month of city air, anything fresh would smell quite different.

There were peacocks!! And ponies, and sea eagles, and herons, and an assortment of other birds in some kind of little zoo.  It was awesome.  We couldn't really touch any of the ponies or do much more than stare at them and take pictures from our side of the fence, but still, it was nice to see animals other than gigantic pigeons and city dogs.

The best part of Margaret Island by far were the ruins.  I have a basic knowledge of what they were, but apparently the daughter of a Hungarian king lived there as a nun in the distant past.  It was so much fun to explore the ruins and imagine what they were like had the actual building been intact.  There were little kids using the ruins as their playground, which was cute.  I recorded a lot of video, so anticipate another one coming in a week or so.




Many people on the island were exploring with cameras in hand, so for once, I didn't feel conspicuous and touristy with mine in front of my face for 60% of the time.  We came across a beautiful old church, some tall structure that seemed to have been converted into a restaurant, and a beautiful natural spring.

There was a HUGE tree with a bouncy branch upon which people could sit and bounce.  That was fun.

After about two hours, we still hadn't seen everything, but we were getting cold and tired, and besides, it was getting dark and we had been told by Adriana that Margaret Island after dark isn't the safest place to be.





So we left and went to the Turkish restaurant near Nyugati that Dani and I visited with Rhaelynn because Laura has been wanting to try it out.  I ate couscous without even knowing that is what it was, picking out the awkward vegetables, and it was rather good and rather cheap.  I wish these places were located by school.  So far, I've only found bakeries and fast food restaurants.

That night, we watched the Fellowship of the Ring.  There are plans to continue the rest of the series in the next couple of weeks.  Fun times.