This Sporting Blog: 2026

Saturday, 10 January 2026

Budapest by Day

Once I realised where the hotel was relative to Buda Castle, I had an idea. (People who know me are now playing the beginning of Beethoven's fifth in their head)

I start work at 8.30. If I got up early enough, I could do a quick tour of the outside of the castle and come back down in time to start work.

It also gave me the opportunity to travel in a funicular carriage - an unexpected delight!

A brown funicular railway carriage, her name is Margit.

I got the first funicular up to the castle in the morning, which meant I saw sunrise over Buda Castle.

Pink dawn rising behind statue of a rider on a horse, next to a Rococco building.

It was a proper "all-timer" of a memory.

One thing that got me is I knew who the statue was without looking. Now I'm sure it's because the statue is the same as - or really similar to - the statue in the Heldenplatz, but I didn't need to see the plaque to know that's Prinz Eugen.

(Having looked this up while writing this post, I've discovered that the first funicular now leaves at 8. I'd like to believe I would have gone up the stairs if there had been no funicular. I would have missed out on something spectacular if I hadn't.)

I did an hour wander around the outside of the castle.

Map of the castle so you can sort of place the next few photos.

And yes, it was quite foggy.

The next three photos are from Buda castle facing Pest.

They move from left to right.

Foggy view of the Kettenbrücke looking down from Buda Castle along the Danube.

View directly across the Kettenbrücke from the castle. You can also see several of the big fancy hotels.

Photo from Buda Castle, the Kettenbrücke is on the left. The other big buildings are the big fancy hotels.

Very foggy photo to the right of Buda Castle, looking along the Danube. The statue of Mary can be seen on the right of the photo.

Two photos of the Matthias Church.

Main tower of the Matthias Church. Wikipedia informs me it is late Gothic in style.

The side of the Mattias Church, you can see the tower on the left of the picture. At the front is the rest of the building. The roof, decorated with red, blue and yellow tiles, can be clearly seen.

I acknowledge the church overall is impressive, but I do love that style of roof excessively. I blame the Stefansdom.

And finally the Fisherman's Bastion.

Because I cannot do apostrophes in at least one of the places I use alt-text, I will have to call this the Bastion of the Fishermen. It is an off-white neo-Romanesque building, with one large tower attached to a second thinner tower. There are stairs leading up to the building. A small group of tourists is standing in front of it.

It's such a delightfully different structure to find in the middle of a castle complex.

As you can see in that last picture, people were starting to appear at the Castle District which was a good sign that I needed to get back down to the hotel to start work on time. Which I did.