On Saturday the 5th April 2025, we woke up and had breakfast in our hotel. Checked out and left our cases at the hotel as we had a 8pm flight. Time for one last look about Budapest.
We decided to walk back into the city as we wanted to visit the New York Café made famous by Instagram. Dubbed the most beautiful café in the world.
As we got there we had other ideas, the queue was stupidly long. To pay through the nose for an expensive coffee wasn't worth the wait. It did long amazing inside through the windows though.
 |
New York Café is celebrated for its breath-taking architectural splendour, with an interior that boasts ornate ceilings, gilded stucco, grand chandeliers, and luxurious furnishings, all housed within the Italian Renaissance-style New York Palace built in the late 19th century, during the gilded age.
We wandered along through the shops and ended up back on Vaci Utca and stopped for a drink by the moon at Molnár's kürtőskalács.
We now walked back along the Danube.
We pass the Girl with Her Dog statue.
Life-size bronze sculpture of a girl playing ball with her dog by sculptor Raffay Dávid.
A bit further on was the Little Princess Statue.
The Little Princess statue, the original 50 cm small sculpture of the statue sitting on the railing of the Danube Promenade in Budapest, was created in 1972 by László Marton (1925–2008), a Munkácsy and Kossuth Prize-winning sculptor.
The artist was inspired by his eldest daughter (Évike) from his first marriage, who often played in a princess costume, with a newspaper crown made by her father on her head, in Tabán, and at home, imagining the bathrobe as a cloak. This image prompted her father, the artist, to create this small sculpture.
This is how László Marton, the creator, writes about it: “ Évike was born from my first marriage. At the age of 5, she played in a little princess costume on the Tabán playground. As soon as I saw this, I immediately had the theme. I designed it under the title Little Princess. It was placed in an elegant place, on the Danube Promenade. It became a symbol of Budapest .” (excerpt from László Marton ’s autobiographical book, Életutam .)
“ I modeled it after my own daughter,” says László Marton in his studio (2007), “she was probably six years old and playing in the garden. She was dressed as a princess: she had a bathrobe draped over her shoulders and a crown on her head. I managed to capture this moment and I immediately felt that it was a well-done creation. Years later, the capital asked me for a statue. I immediately thought of the Little Princess and fortunately we managed to find a place for her where the statue would feel comfortable .”
This statue was placed on the Danube Promenade in 1990, and a duplicate was placed in Tapolca , the artist's hometown. A copy of the same statue still stands in Japan – donated by the artist – in front of the concert hall of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space cultural centre.[ The original small sculpture (1972) is the property of the Hungarian National Gallery.
We walk on and visit Vörösmarty Tér and the market square again, and visit the shops here.
Here in the square is the Mihály Vörösmarty Statue.
At the centre of the square facing west is a statue by Eduard Telcs and Ede Kallós of poet Mihály Vörösmarty. Behind the monument is a fenced park and a fountain flanked by stone lions. At the north end of the square is the Café Gerbeaud and stairs to the southern terminus of the Budapest Metro's line M1. The square is also a business area, including offices for Ibusz and Aeroflot. The British Embassy is located at the square.
We walk on after the market to the Langos and Beers opposite St Stephen Basilica again for lunch.
We had another Goulash covered Langos and some beer.
We walk on and towards Parliament again. Here we reach Liberty Square.
In front of the Square is a Memorial for Victims of the German Occupation.
The Memorial for Victims of the German Occupation is a monument created in memory of the German invasion of Hungary, located in Budapest's Liberty Square. The memorial has sparked controversy and angered Jewish community organizations, with critics alleging that the monument absolves the Hungarian state and Hungarians of their collaboration with Nazi Germany and complicity in the Holocaust. Accordingly, many individuals and organizations leave improvised individual tributes to Holocaust victims along the edge of the site.
The Holocaust Educational Trust has described the memorial as an example of Holocaust distortion, stating that the memorial "fails to recognise that almost all Hungarian citizens murdered during the Holocaust were Jews" and that the memorial deflects responsibility for the Holocaust by suggesting that "all Hungarians were innocent victims of the Nazi Occupation" without acknowledging that "Hungarian citizens were complicit in the process of rounding up Jews and putting them into ghettos and onto trains to be transported to camps."
 |
| A film crew busy filming something here in the square. |
The square is a mix of business and residential. The United States Embassy in Hungary and the historicist style headquarters of the Hungarian National Bank abut the west side of the square. Some buildings on the square are designed in the Art Nouveau style. Ignác Alpár designed two of the buildings. The square houses monuments to Ronald Reagan and Harry Hill Bandholtz and a monument to the Soviet liberation of Hungary in World War II from Nazi German occupation. In 2020, together with the United States Embassy, it built a large statue of US Pres. George H.W. Bush. Some of the monuments like the WWII liberation sculpture were designed by Károly Antal. The Memorial for Victims of the German Occupation portrays Hungary as an angel being attacked by Germany in the form of an eagle -- symbolism that obscures Hungary's willing participation in the Holocaust. A counter-monument that includes photos of Hungarians who were sent to Auschwitz was created in 2014 in front of the memorial.
Ronald Reagan Statue stands in Liberty Square, Budapest, to commemorate the former United States president and his efforts to end the Cold War and Russian control over Hungary.
We walk back to Parliament and the statue of Count Gyula Andrássy.
Gyula Andrássy (1823 – 1890) was a Hungarian statesman, who served as Prime Minister of Hungary (1867–1871) and subsequently as Foreign Minister of Austria-Hungary (1871–1879). Andrássy was a conservative; his foreign policies looked to expanding the Empire into Southeast Europe, preferably with British and German support, and without alienating Turkey. He saw Russia as the main adversary, because of its own expansionist policies toward Slavic and Orthodox areas. He distrusted Slavic nationalist movements as a threat to his multi-ethnic empire.
The bronze equestrian statue of Count Gyula Andrássy, has been erected on Kossuth tér in front of the building of Parliament in central Budapest.
The late Prime Minister’s 6.5-metre high statue was the final artefact to be added to achieve the reconstruction of the square’s original setting. The original statue, the work of renowned Hungarian sculptor György Zala, was installed on the square, handed over to the public in 1904. The recast equestrial statue, which can be seen at the southern side of Parliament, is the work of artists at Bencsik Alkotóközösség Művészeti.
We sit by the river and people watch. So many fake people doing their fake poses for Instagram. What can you really trust what you see and read online? Seems now days everything is fake, people even more so, fake lashes, tans hair, boobs...wait the last one maybe not so bad ha ha!!
We catch the metro back to the hotel and call for a Uber to take us to the airport. Then eventually our Ryanair flight takes off and I get an amazing last view of Budapest lit up from the Air!
