You can’t always trust the first story you hear. Of course, as with many other things, you begin to wonder whether the truth of the story is the important thing anyway. To make a long story reasonably short, your intrepid travelers were surprised to learn from a different source (it seems heartless to say “disappointed” to learn) that the gentlemen defenestrated in the 17th century actually survived their ordeal. Explanations for their survival varied from the miraculous Catholic version involving angels’ wings to the Protestant account emphasizing the very bulky clothes and the glancing drop onto a nice slope and landing in a dung pile. That made us wonder whether this reenactor outside the historic set of windows had done his research.
By the way, the view from the castle and its grounds is very nice indeed. We understand that Ambassador Shirley Temple Black used to enjoy sitting out on the grounds of the US Embassy (see the squarish building on the right with the flag) which shares a comparable view of the city.
The walk down from the castle was certainly better than a walk up.
After a full day of touristing, we took in a performance of the Czech Philharmonic at the Rudolfinum. We enjoyed the concert, although there was some confusion in the seating process and we ended up without a program, which we wouldn’t have been able to read anyway. Especially nice was an encore performed by the guest cello soloist. He enlisted the first chair cello player from the orchestra to perform an unaccompanied duet with him. The exceptionally lively acoustics helped make it an exquisite performance.
Early next morning we were off on a long bus ride through Bohemia and Moravia in the Czech Republic, then Slovakia (split from the Czech Republic in 1993), and finally into Hungary to our destination of Budapest on the Danube. We got reacquainted with the Colonel on our way.
We had a bit of time in the late afternoon and evening to explore the area of Pest around our hotel. It turns out we actually got a room with a nice view of the bridge between Buda and Pest. That’s Buda Palace in the traditional setting at the top of the hill.
After dinner, we walked back along the road leading to the bridge.
