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Published: November 24th 2011
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Budapest #1
Looking down over the city When you last left this exciting (and seemingly never ending) adventure, Rachelle was in the enviable position of sharing a night train cabin with 5 men. Would she survive? Would she come out with a ring on her finger? In the end, she did better than Leah and I as they all disappeared in the middle of the night for various destinations, leaving her to a peaceful night’s rest while our cabin was not quite as quiet. It turned out the Asian guy was a snorer. Leah was not impressed, and in her drunk state, her tact was at a even lower level than usual and she had no hesitation in screaming out at him to shut up. He was scared enough to comply and I can see why....
Soon into our trip, we found out Rachelle’s penchant for creating nicknames for everyone – I became Charles (as in Charles in Charge because I took care of everything), Rachelle became Grey (for her ‘grey’ hairs despite her being the youngest of all of us, and you would have to search pretty hard to find any), and Leah became ‘Manu’ (for bringing out all the Kiwi sayings). This city
St. Stephen's Basilica
One of the first stops on our walking tour started a trend over the next few cities of being some of the ‘funnest’ travelling I have done. It was so good travelling with Leah again and more than once I found myself in tears from laughing so hard. Mostly from laughing at Leah, but occasionally with her as well. 😉
We awoke to the sun shining in Budapest and made our way to our hostel where we dumped our stuff and had quick showers before we went out to explore. After a coffee to keep Rachelle sane, we joined a free walking tour of the city and got commentary on parts of the city and monuments we wouldn’t normally have known anything about. I have never been a fan of the walking tours but I am fast becoming a convert. It was really good and gave us a feel of the city that there is still a lot of corruption still around. Saying that, it is a very beautiful city, especially some of the buildings like the Parliament building (Orszaghaz), St. Stephen's Basilica (Szent Istvan Bazilika), the Great Synagogue (Nagy Zsinagoga) and Castle Hill (Varhegy). We finished the tour next to a moving monument of shoes,
Famous Hungarian
Me stealing his sword where Jews had been told to leave them before they were thrown to their deaths in the Danube during World War 2.
We headed back into the centre as Leah continued what turned out to be a trip long quest to find some Birkenstock shoes. She failed here, but finally succeeded at our last destination in Frankfurt. After a delicious lunch that we made ourselves made from bread, ham and cheese bought from local markets, I took the girls on a huge walking tour that led us over the Danube and up to the Liberation Monument on Gellért Hill. It gave us some pretty cool views over the city before we headed down and over to Castle Hill. We timed it perfectly as the sun had just set and we got some amazing photos over the city and the Danube. We also found a ‘Romeo and Juliet type’ (the girls’ words, not mine) of building and we got plenty of photos here.
By this time, we were slightly delirious from so much walking, exhaustion and growing hunger so we trekked back to our hostel before we went out for dinner in search of some
Girls getting a photo
While dodging the sensor based water feature traditional Hungarian fare. We found our recommended restaurant and although it didn’t blow our minds like restaurants later in the trip, my goulash was pretty good. Afterwards, we went hunting for a recommended bar but had no luck on that one, but found another bar where we chilled out in a row boat with a drink.
The following morning, after a pastry breakfast, we headed to the Terror Museum, Leah’s main reason for putting Budapest on the itinerary. Personally, I had been here before on my last visit to Budapest, but it was no less impressive this time around. It is one of the very top museums in Europe detailing not only the atrocities committed by the Nazi’s during WW2, but that their efforts were eclipsed by Communist regime. We spent a couple of hours wandering through here becoming more and more amazed at what man will do to one another before we emerged.
We headed for lunch and then for drink to take our minds off the museum. Here we managed to find the bar we were searching for the night before and we were impressed. It was incredibly random but had a
really cool chilled out vibe. So if you are ever in Budapest, don’t miss Szimpla!
Then we went back to the hostel to grab our bag and headed to the train station for our night train to Krakow!
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