It is a pure treat to fly into this old-world Mecca and take a rickety van from the outskirts of the city into the hub of Hungary s capital. With over two million inhabitants, the city accommodates a fifth of the country s total population. Buda, buda and Pest. The western part of the city, Buda, stands on a series of hills.
Pest lies in a basin to the East of the Danube River.
To this day, the hustle of Pest, the curve of the Danube and the relative calm of Buda remain intact. It s amazing that anything in Budapest has survived the centuries based on the city s tumultuous history. It was plagued with foreign occupation by the French and Polish and devastated at the hands of the Huns, Mongols, Turks and Hapsburgs. It was also one of Europe s most impressive cities, embracing the Gothic period and Renaissance in the 15 th century. Ironically, the city also flourished under the Hapsburg monarchy during the 1800s.