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Published: March 5th 2014
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Three days were spent in Budapest - one rainy, one bluebird and one cloudy. We certainly got an all access pass view of Budapest with weather like that! We arrived late on Thursday from Vienna and our first glimpses of the city were not fantastic - outside the Keleti train station with roadworks and dodgy people everywhere... I managed to convince Matt to get us a taxi which, although registered (you have to be super careful in Budapest) seemed to take us all over the place before finally arriving at our hotel - the Fraser Residence. Once we checked in we were told to go around the corner to Corvin Plaza to get some dinner and came across a beautiful shopping centre similar to what you'd see in Sydney. We later found out that this area of Pest was recently done up by the Hungarians, with a new shopping mall the first to make the area much nicer. We ended up with takeaway Chinese and had a look around and then went to bed.
We awoke to a cloudy day but didn't think it looked too bad so, after reading lots of metro horror stories, we set off for the
centre of town. Aside from ridiculously fast escalators that would eat you up in one footstep, the metro was fine, though the three lines were very different. Our main line was the oldest and the trains looked like they were pre world war! We ended up being ushered off the train one stop early - still don't know why but the train was emptied quicksmart. We went into St Stephans Basilica and walked up the steps to the top and when we got to the top it was raining which seemed to come from nowhere! We still managed to get a good look of Pest and across the river to Buda. The house of Parliament stood out as one of the most impressive buildings I've ever seen.
The rest of our day was spent trying to find a good Museum to get out of the rain but we didn't succeed and my shoes were leaking (perils of walking on cobblestones all the time) so we went back to the apartment for a rest and to dry off. This was after having a huge coffee at Cosmo Coffee and then Hungarian dumplings and chicken with paprika which seems to be
the traditional food here. For the evening we went back to Corvin Plaza and went shopping - I bought a top from H&M but otherwise we just window shopped, knowing full well we are not even halfway through our trip and our bags are already full! We went into the supermarket in the basement to get something to make for dinner and it was insane! Their seafood section actually had a fish tank with huge fish swimming around ready to be picked for dinner... our question as what do they do when you say "I want that one" - how do they kill them and get them home? Such a culture shock!
Thankfully the next day we woke to an absolutely bluebird day - the difference between one day to the next was impressive and very welcome. We went over to Buda to Castle Hill and Buda Castle and the accompanying Matthias Church. Turns out Budapests "Castle Hill" actually has a castle (poor form NSW!) The views from Castle Hill were so impressive - all across Budapest including parliament which sits right along the river. Matt had a photo with a hawk which turned out pretty well - it
was a novelty and touristy thing to do but when do you get to have a photo up close with a hawk! We walked across the chain bridge back to the Pest side of town and went to see the Shoes on the Danube which (though there was no signage) we understand to be sort of a tribute to all the Hungarian Jews killed in World War Two. It's quite a unique display of a number of shoe sculptures all along the river and a lot of flowers and candles that people have left. We left and had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe and then tried to go to the markets and also a Museum on that side of town but both were closed which was a bit strange for a Saturday!
On Sunday we checked out late, knowing full well that we would be exhausted by the time we got to our sleeper train. We went over to Heroes Square which was just a large monument with Gabriel in the middle. It was supposedly one of the big things to do in Budapest but was a bit underwhelming. Maybe we've just seen too many of these types
of things now throughout other cities we've been to. We tried to go into Parliament House but found it to be surrounded by roadworks and extremely expensive with not such good reviews. We decided instead to go to the House of Terror which was a museum based on terror regimes throughout the past 100 years. The information would have been interesting but it was pages and pages of information to read on a sheet of paper (everything else in Hungarian of course) for each room and it was hard to work out what the items were and what they meant. It just ended up being really tiring!! After this we went and got our bags the. Waited for our sleeper train at the Mcdonalds at the train station.
Mcflurry verdict: same as Switzerland - mashed up M&Ms - top of our list with Switzerland 😊
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