Budapest Part II – Gellert Hill

Spa lobby

Woke up early on this morning to get fast start across the Danube and up Gellert Hill Before the heat built. Imagine my shock to reach the top of the hill and find the Budapest Citadel closed for renovation. Seems like they could post signs at the bottom of the frikken hill and saved a lot of tourists the long slog up. But all was not lost – at least I managed to get some pretty good panoramic photos from the Citadel grounds and was able to visit the Gellert Cave Church and Gellert Hotel and Spa.

The Gellert Cave Church was built after one of the city fathers led a delegation to visit the French sacred site of Lourdes. The group promptly came back home and were inspired to build this cave church. Later the fine Hungarian engineers decided to dig a tunnel through Gellert Hill to the boulevard running along the Danube to improve traffic in the city. Unfortunately they missed their mark by a mile and ended up in the cave church. The locals saw this grand mistake as the work of the hand of God so when the Engineers closed the tunnel entrance to hided their colossal mistake and shame the church leaders used the tunnel to expand the cave church.

During the German occupation the Pauline Monks that lived and ran the church used it to protect the persecuted – dressing them as fellow monks and hiding them in plain site. After the war when that jackass Roosevelt enslaved the Hungarian people by giving the country to the godless Soviet Heathens. The first thing the Soviets did was destroy everything in the church and pour a two meter concrete wall to block the entrance.

Once the Evil Empire fell the locals tore down this wall and the little cave has been open for worship and tourism ever since.

After my fruitless Gellert excursion I returned to the Budapest Central Market for more people watching. Unfortunately one of the downsides of traveling light (only 4 pair of pants and 4 shirts) laundry chores take up part of the day every ten days or so. This was laundry day so I had to kill three hours locating a self service laundry, navigating the confusing instructions to operate the machines, and waiting for wash, rinse, spin, dry cycles to run their course. The good news – I’m heading into the homestretch of my trip (Minsk, Tallinn, Stockholm, New York, and Colorado with freshly laundered clothes, clear eyes and a clean mind! Well two out of three’s not bad anyway.

Photos of my Gellert Day attached.