Day 14 - Last Day in Budapest

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Today we are in Budapest, and it is the last day of our cruise. The ship continues on to Bucharest for another week, but most of the passengers get off here. There are options to stay in Budapest for a few more days in a hotel or take a bus to Prague for a couple of days also. But we figured two weeks was enough, and we’re tired and ready to head home. The included tour of Budapest is called a Panoramic View of Budapest. In Viking River Cruise speak Panoramic means you get on the bus, they drive you around the city pointing out some of the sites and then drop you in the center of town for an hour or so to shop and drive you back to the ship.

That didn’t sound very appealing to us, so we signed up for the Budapest Castle Hill City Hike. Now in Viking River Cruise speak Hike means a walking tour with about 10,000 steps. Just what we like! As with the other hikes we have taken on this cruise, the word hike scares away most of the passengers, so this time there was Jody & I and a couple from New Jersey, Ralph & Cassie. So the four of us met up with our tour guide Dora, and yes, she did make the joke about her being Dora the Explorer, which is why it was easy to remember her name. Since there were only four of us, we didn’t need the listening devices and we could just talk normally.

Budapest is city of just under 2 million people and is made up of two cities Buda and Pest that have combined into a single city with the clever name of Budapest. The Buda side is hilly and green and contains the nature sites, and the Pest side is flat and contains the cultural sites. Budapest is also pronounced like Budapesht by the Hungarians and locals are quick with the lessons in pronunciation. Hungarian evidently a difficult language to learn as the alphabet has 44 letters. Hungary has a very checkered past, with moving boundaries, Soviet control, and not a lot of local industry. Hungary was dominated by the Soviet Union but moved to democracy and capitalism in 1989 and the Soviet Union was collapsing. Our tour guide Dora was born in 1977 and still remembers some of the repressions of her early years like being forbidden to learn any foreign languages in school until after 1989.

We did ask her what she though of Viktor Orban and the current regime in Hungary and it is about what we expected. The people in the rural areas love Orban and the people in the urban areas hate him. Sounds like a familiar story!

We began our tour by crossing the Danube on the Liberty Bridge, known by the locals as the Green Bridge. We walked past the Rock Chapel which is a chapel and Pauline monastery built into a cave in the side of the mountain. It looked very interesting! Next we passed the Gellert Hotel, known for its natural thermal baths. There we boarded the tram for a ride along the Danube to the base of the Castle Hill Complex. The Castle Hill Complex is the site of the Buda Castle which started about the 13^th century with most of the major work done in the 18^th century. Much of it was damaged or destroyed in WW2, and during the Communist times it was mostly neglected and used for storage. Since 1989, Hungary with support of the EU and UNESCO has been restoring the buildings to their former glory.

A lot of reconstruction was underway while we were there and you could see where the old building had been destroyed when it was beyond repair and a brand new building using concrete walls was being erected and then an old looking façade would be applied to the exterior. The result was a building that looked medieval but was internally modern construction. At this point, most of the interiors are unfinished, so Castle Hill Complex tours are limited to the exterior of the buildings. Fortunately, there was an escalator and an elevator that took us up to the top of the complex so we wouldn’t need to climb all the steps. When we reached the top we saw that there was a funicular that ran up the side of the hill that would also have been an interesting way up.

The restoration project is going very well, and the exterior of the Buda Castle is certainly impressive. There are several fountains and statues that have been restored that are beautiful. There is a First Word War Memorial with some great sculptures out front, but they haven’t got around to a corresponding Second World War Memorial yet. There is also a Harry Houdini House Museum dedicated to the escape artist who was Hungarian, but not from Budapest. At the very top of the Castle Hill Complex is St Matthias Church.

St Matthias Church is a beautiful gothic church originally built in the 14^th century and extensively restored in the 19^th century. The gothic architecture is similar to the gothic churches we have seen on this cruise, but the big difference is the polychromic ceramic roof tiles that are popular in Hungary. They are really striking! The interior is open to the public but only by guided tour. The lines were long, and we just didn’t have time. We did manage to climb up on Fisherman’s Bastion, a series of turrets around the church courtyard and the view of Budapest from there were spectacular.

By now we were running a little behind the tour schedule, I guess the ship wants us back on board by a specific time. We had seen a few interesting souvenir shops up here on Castle Hill including one that had a lot of handmade embroidery that Hungary is known for, along with some interesting t-shirts. We asked Dora about the quality of souvenirs up here compared to the ones at the Marketplace below. She said they might be a little more expensive up here on Castle Hill, but they would be genuine handmade. The ones in the Marketplace might be made in China so we would need to look close. In the end, we decided to take 30 minutes free time and visit the Castle Hill souvenir shops and make up the time by taking the subway back to the ship.

We hurried back to the handmade embroidery shop and Jody found a great homemade embroidered blouse and an embroidered t-shirt. They even had an embroidered t-shirt and a motorcycle t-shirt for me. We met back up with Dora and headed back down the side of the hill by the steps, but it was much easier going downhill. Along the way, the scenery was beautiful. At the bottom of the hill, we hopped on the subway, emerged and hopped onto the tram and before we knew it we were back at the ship. Along the way, Dora pointed out which subway or tram would get us to some of the other interesting sites of Budapest, and just how close the Marketplace was to the ship. We really enjoyed this hike and Dora was such a great tour guide!

We made a quick stop at our room on the ship to drop off our stuff and have a quick lunch in the reataurant which just happened to hae Hungarian goulash which was delicious. After lunch we headed over to the Marketplace. Now the first floor of the Marketplace is for the locals and has a combination of meats, sausages, and fresh fruits and vegetables. Upstairs is like a Food Court with all local foods along with a huge array of Budapest souvenirs. It really looked more like a flea market. There were lots of t-shirts, and the prices were cheap – we got a t-shirt for Jody for just 10 Euro. But the embroidered goods were just not as nice as the ones we bought up on Castle Hill, so it looks like we made the right choice getting our souvenirs where we did.

By now, we were done. We were both tired from a long day, Jody had about 16,000 steps. So we decided to head back to the ship, write this blog, and pack. Tomorrow, we board the bus for the airport at 6:30am and we should be in Orlando by 6:00pm. It’s been a great trip!

Will we do a river cruise again? Sure, but probably not for a while. I understand what my mother liked about them so much. The service and the accommodations were great. It was fun, but most of the passengers were a little older than us or had the beginnings of mobility issues, and we always felt we spent too much time on the ship when we should be visiting places on the shore. The pace is much slower than the bus tours, but the ships are small and there isn’t much to do when you’re not eating or on a shore excursion. So, for now we’ll stick with Insight Vacations and their bus tours, but we’ll probably be back when we’re older and the bus tour pace is too much for us.

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