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Published: March 15th 2010
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Ian was in Hungary for a few days, business of course, and as it almost coincided with my birthday we decided to turn it into a weekend of sightseeing for us both. So while Ian had flown over on the Thursday, I followed him on the Friday pm after school. From Munich the flight was only an hour and half, just the right amount of time for me to complete my German homework while jet setting across Europe.
I arrived at 6.30pm and Ian was there to meet me at the airport … while he had wanted me to find my own way to central Budapest I had put my foot down (for once) and insisted that he meet me at the airport and we travelled into the city centre together!!
My first impressions on Budapest where not the best, but I guess when it’s dark and raining and you’re in a local taxi for 30 mins driving through rush hour traffic, not many cities are going to appear at their best. I also came to the conclusion that Hungary taxi drivers are worse than New York taxi drivers and even worse than Italian taxi drivers ….. we were
weaving in and out of traffic so fast I nearly threw up in the back seat (not a good start to the weekend)!?
However, we checked into the hotel which was very central and at half its normal price an absolute bargain. The rooms where also huge … in fact they actually called all their rooms “suites” as you had a living room, bedroom, bathroom and toilet ….. All rooms came complete with a little kitchenette with a microwave instead of a kettle (Yuk … microwaved tea).
We threw our bags in the room and headed out for something to eat. Within 2 mins of the hotel was the main shopping street “Vaci Utca”, we strolled along in the light rain taking in all the sights. Now late on a Friday evening is simply not the best time to view Budapest, it must have been bin day the following morning as all the shops and houses had thrown out their rubbish into the street. It was all piled high … rubbish, furniture, clothes etc all in the street. And it seems that the local people like to do a little “recycling” of their own before the bin men
Parliament Building
Taken from Buda across the Dunube. arrive!? Lots of people where routing around in the rubbish taking anything they thought of obvious use. Now this is quite clearly a weekly event as they all had trolleys and boxes to take away anything they deemed worthy!?
But, rubbish aside, we found a lovely little local restaurant where we managed to order two fish dishes that were superb, along with some very drinkable Hungarian wine. After we had finished eating we strolled back to the hotel. Ian was highly amused when we saw what appeared to be a young man, asleep on a chair in the middle of the street with a cardboard box over his head for privacy!!! Ian was desperate to take a photo but I wouldn’t let him as I thought it was cruel .. it wasn’t obvious if the man was a local tramp or just plain drunk (and I felt bad for him had he been homeless)!?
After breakfast at the hotel the following morning we set off for a full days sightseeing. Now my interesting fact about Budapest is that originally it was three cities .. Buda, Pest and another city whose name escapes me right now (but that not
very important). Eventually the cities all joined to form one large city … BUDAPEST. With Buda on one side of the Danube and Pest on the other.
As our hotel was situated on Pest we headed off to St Stephen’s Basilica (an old church which was fairly impressive) then next it was off the Parliament building to get us out of the rain. The Parliament building was fascinating and was free to all EU citizens. We had a guided tour of the main entrance with its grand stair case, the national assembly hall (complete with bullet hole from an attempted assassin in 1912), the Domed Hall and the crown jewels. It was all very interesting and the highlight of the weekend.
From here we managed to stroll across to Buda via Margaret Bridge and along the banks of the Danube to really appreciate the cities many sights, luckily it had stopped raining by this time. We walked up hill to the Matthias Church, across to the Royal Palace and back across the bridge back onto Pest. By this time it was time to put our feet up and to relax a little with few glasses of wine before
searching out a Vegetarian restaurant I had read about. When we eventually found the restaurant it was very interesting as it was more like a school canteen … plastic table and chairs, self services and no alcohol!? Non of this had the review had not deemed worthy to mention!!? But we were hungry and tired at this stage so anything would have done. But all in all the food was pretty good ….. even if we did have to eat it fairly quickly as we’d arrived at 7.45 and the restaurant closes at 8pm!!!???
On Sunday we took things a little easier, we strolled through Gellert Hill Citadel taking scenic shots of the city, had a peak inside Budapest’s oldest and grandest hotel (Hotel Gellert) and then made our way over to the Hungarian National Museum where we managed to loose ourselves for a few hours taking in all the history that Budapest has to offer. Before heading back to the airport we manage to find one of Budapest’s Hummus Bars for dinner .. lots of veggie options and lots of garlic (Ian loved it, that man can never have too much garlic).
So all in all Budapest
was much more interesting than I had at first thought. If you fancy a short weekend break then Friday through to Sunday is plenty of time. In the summer it gets packed, so slightly out of season is much better as you won’t have to queue for anything. The only way to describe it is that it had little parts that reminded me of Paris and then little parts that reminded me of Rome (the old town Rome) … it had quite a charm to it (minus all the rubbish of course). Here’s a couple of photo’s:
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Tracey
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3rd city
I want to know what the 3rd city is called now!!!!!!????????? looks like a fab trip :) xx