Budapest: Margaret Bridge and Island

A couple posts back I showed you this collage of the Margaret Bridge, seen our second day in Budapest while we were out walking about:

Interestingly, it's the Chain Bridge that most tourists want to see, as seen in my post here.

But our tour guide told us her favorite was the Margaret Bridge, because of the kink in it here.

You can also see it in the top-right image above.

To give some perspective, here are 7 of Budapest's 8 bridges:
(click to enlarge)

In the center is the Chain Bridge, where our Viking boat docked.

Right side of the Danube is Pest.  Left side is Buda.

And see the island?  That's where we spent our Easter Sunday!

But first, we had to get there from our hotel, down south and east outside of this map...which we did via public transportation, as you know from my last post here. 

Along the way...impressions.  Always something to grab the eye...like the top-right Liberty Statue.

Truth is, we had planned to take the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus to see her...

...but when we got to those green umbrellas, we were told our travel pass did not include their buses.

Bummer.  So we just got more impressions!

And since we were in the area of the Elizabeth Bridge (south of the Chain Bridge), we had a chance to peek inside the Inner City Parish Church nearby, following their morning service.

It's the oldest church in Pest, founded in 1046.

 And since it was Easter Sunday, after all, I'm glad we had a chance to visit a church!

But our mission for the day was to get to the Margaret Bridge and cross it halfway to get to the island.

It's Budapest's second oldest bridge, from 1876 (the Chain Bridge is from 1849).

Up to this point, it had been raining off and on all morning but stopped the minute we set foot on the island!

Margaret Island is 2.5 km (1.6 mi) long and 500 metres (550 yards) wide, 

in between the Margaret and Arpad bridges.

Our goal was to walk it from one end to the other.

See the mistletoe?  Did we stop and kiss each other?

  The Centennial Memorial from 1973 commemorates the city's hundreth anniversary of unification.

 There is a 5350 metre long, rubber-coated jogging track around the island, marked at 500 metre intervals,

which was nice to see being used.  Other than that, we were alone!

And the farther north we walked, the farther behind the familiar landmarks became.

Margaret Island is a recreational park nowadays, with various sports establishments, like tennis and swimming. However, formerly "the island was dominated by nunneries, churches and cloisters until the 16th century. During the Ottoman wars the monks and nuns fled and the buildings were destroyed."  (Wiki) 

 These are the 13th century ruins of a Franciscan church.

This church is a Premonstratensian chapel with a Romanesque tower from the 12th century.

And yes, we tried to get into it...to no avail.

The water tower, under rennovation/cleaning (?), was built in 1911, at 57 meters high.

To be honest, it felt like the entire island was "shut down" until we got to the hotels at the north end.

But we did pass a tiny zoo with exoctic waterfowl...

...and lots of statues as we neared the thermal spa area of one of the hotels.

The music fountain, bottom-left, was dead as a doornail...but then it WAS still winter.

Once we rounded the thermal spas, we saw the 2 hotels and picked one for our late-afternoon lunch.

Just exactly what the doctor ordered.  (Didn't even take pictures of that, I see!)

And since we were now at the north end of the island, instead of walking all the way back to the Margaret Bridge, we took the nearby Arpad Bridge to catch the metro back to our hotel.

All this on a lazy and Mother-Nature Easter Sunday.