Travel Diaries: Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest

Joe and I went to Budapest, Hungary back in August 2014 and I did a few Hungary Travel Diary posts, then completely forgot to finish them off. Now, this is one very specific 20 minutes of the trip I'm going to talk about. It may seem strange to dedicate an entire post to just a 20 minute experience but once you've finished reading, and have seen the pictures I hope you will understand. There is no way I can describe what we saw adequately with words, but I'm going to dry my damnedest and where words wont do, hopefully the pictures can take up the slack.

After dinner one evening, we were taking a slow wander back to the hotel when some glowing figures in the sky caught our eye. They were tiny dots, floating around in circles not far from where we were. We couldn't understand what we were seeing; it looked like the stars were floating lazily above us.

Were they some kind of lanterns (but there were just too many?), were they angels (but we hadn't had that much to drink), were they some kind of controllable firework (surely we'd know if such as thing existed?). So confused and curious we were that we followed the glowing spots in the sky to see if we could solve the mystery.

As we got closer, a building, intricate and spectacular beyond belief, loomed up above us. It's not often that Joe is lost for words, or really taken aback by the beauty of something, so it was a powerful moment where we both just stood, staring up at the sky, completely silent and transfixed by what we were seeing.

They were not lanterns, or fireworks, or angels in the true sense of the word. They were simply birds. Beautiful, floating birds, drawn to the brightness of the Hungarian Parliament building, illuminated by the lights like so many glittering fairies.

We didn't love Budapest overall, and it's not somewhere we'd go back to, but these few short moments absolutely made the trip for us and it's a sight I will never, ever forget.