The last full day of our river cruise was an incredible smorgasbord of sights, sounds, music, dance and fairy lights. A wonderful end to an enriching, unforgettable, very special journey.
I was so excited by the spectacular ‘fairy lights’ display we saw when we cruised through Budapest as the sun set, I wrote a post about it straightaway. And in my last post I told you of some of the sights we saw in ‘Buda’ and the stories we heard.
But now I would like to fill in the gap and tell you about the superb performance of music to which we were treated in ‘Pest’ after we left ‘Buda’, and the brilliant display of Hungarian folk dancing and music we were privileged to see that afternoon on the ship.
When we crossed the river to attend the piano and organ recital, we drove around to see some of the sights, then entered what I think was formerly a church. It currently is used as facility for the blind. The 30-minute solo performance of music, mostly that of the famous, prolific Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, was truly beautiful. The performer was a professor of music at the Hungarian University, who is internationally renowned and has performed all over the world. He played both piano and organ with great passion and sensitivity. The speed of his fingers had to be seen to be believed - and all from memory. And he was the most charming, delightful man. How lucky were we?
That afternoon, as I watched the high-energy, highly skilled passionate performance of the Hungarian folk dancers, all I could think was “This group even outperforms the Riverdance stars, and that’s saying something!” As well, their repertoire was far more varied. Their musicians were outstanding too.
I wish we could entice all these performers to Melbourne for a Hungarian festival! It would be simply magical!
I have now come to the end of talking about our river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest. I am sorry it jumped about a bit. However, I still have more to tell you about Pest, where I stayed a couple of days before travelling to Vienna.
After that I will finish talking about my current ocean cruise. I have already told you about Oslo and Copenhagen and still have my special times in Tallinn in Estonia, St Petersberg in Russia (where we toured for two days), and in Helsinki in Finland, to tell you about. As I write this, our ship has just berthed in Bruges in Belgium, from where I am touring to Flanders. Tomorrow we go back to Southampton, from where I will be travelling to Paris by a succession of trains for my next river cruise - along the Seine river. This cruise starts and end in Paris.
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| View from the coach of another magnificent building in 'Buda', after we entered 'Pest'. |
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| The organ in the old church where we saw the recital. |
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| Some lovely stained glass windows in the church. |
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| Some of the ceiling of the church. |
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| Such beautiful windows! A close-up of the top of the window in the third photo. |
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| Our pianist. I have not been able to find out his name. The next photos show the folk dancers and musicians. |
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| The musician in the centre had a very complex kind of xylophone. You could not see his 'sticks' move, he moved them so quickly. He was amazing. |
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