Our Day Trip to Szentendre

I met the girls for breakfast this morning and said goodbye to Joelle. Kim, Yujin, and I decided to take the HEV (Hungarian railway) to a little town on the outskirts of Budapest called Szentendre. It was a blazing hot and humid day. The train ride took only 45 minutes, but due to the lack of air conditioning, we looked like we just left a Bikram Yoga class once we stepped off the train. Szentendre is a quaint town, full of open-air cafes, restaurants, and souvenir shops that sit on narrowly lined cobble-stoned streets. We spent half the day there and we all agreed that it was a nice change of pace from the hustle and bustle of the big city of Budapest.
We stumbled upon a restaurant called LaBirintus and the menu intrigued us enough to sit down. The meal was actually one of the best that I’ve had in Hungary. Of course, my appetizer of choice was the cucumber salad, while the entrée was something similar to a chicken Parmesan. It was nice to have a relaxing lunch under the shady vine-laden tables in the 95+ degree weather. After we stuffed ourselves, we walked towards the river and found even more restaurants and cafes to choose from. Once we finished our souvenir shopping, we returned to the HEV station and went back to the hotel. I said goodbye to Yujin and decided to meet Kim at the Chain Bridge later that evening, so that we could find somewhere to go for dinner. In the meantime, I returned to the dreadful heat and walk to the Gellert area. I brought my laptop with me because I thought I could also find a café on the river to relax and update my blog. Little did I know that the trek would take as long as it did.
The walk alone to the base of the stairs took an hour-and-a-half from the hotel. Once there, it took another 20 minutes to climb to the top. It brought back memories from home of my weekly Koko Crater Hike with the girls. Midway up, I found the Gellert statue and took a bunch of pictures. As I kept climbing I thought to myself, never again will I bring my laptop with me if I plan to see any sights that require any sort of physical activity in the crazy summer heat. Once I got to the top, I was sweating profusely and my feet were aching terribly (I was wearing my Hawaiana slippers!). The view from the top was breathtaking literally and figuratively. After I bought a huge pink bottle of “water no gas”, I made my way back down the hill.
I arrived at the Chain Bridge at 6:30pm, exactly when I was scheduled to meet up with Kim. We headed towards Pest and were going to try one of the restaurants along the Danube, but all of them were Hungarian. So we passed and decided on Via Luna (the Italian restaurant that Court and I ate at a couple of days ago). It ended up being an awesome choice because we were both craving caprese salad and pizza. Dinner took longer than expected and we didn’t get back to our hotel until 9:45pm, a tad bit late for our 9pm scheduled meeting time with Jeff, Laura, and John. When we arrived at The Swallow (the loungy outdoor bar next to Hotel Csaszar), they were already at a table with half-full glasses of beer. We joined them and talked about our day cruising around Budapest and the outlying area of Szentendre. Amazingly, we were all really exhausted so after Kim and I finished our glasses of wine, we all called it a night. We didn’t have to say goodbye though, because we plan to meet up with Jeff and Laura in Prague, and see John tomorrow for breakfast.

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