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Published: September 19th 2008
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Budapest
Fishermens Bastion entrance guards After breakfast we hit the road south again, we were only about 20km from the Hungarian border but it was about another 250km to Budapest if we wanted to go that far today. The roads were pretty good despite the sections that had big grooves caused by the many trucks plying this route and we made good progress without having to use the motorways. It was another hot and sunny day and we were travelling through rolling hills and big fields of yellow and green and brown, it all looked neat and tidy. We took a short detour about halfway to Budapest to visit a little town called Eger, ‘an attractive baroque city with a great hilltop castle, a walkable, quaint town centre and tons of wine-tasting opportunities’. It was indeed very quaint and walkable and the 13th century castle looked cool but we didn’t go in. We had a wander around the town, took some photos and had an icecream but we foregoed the wine and decided to push on to Budapest. Funniest thing was, travelling these open country roads in the middle of the day, hot and sunny, we saw on many of the small gravel side roads, scantily
Budapest
Fishermens Bastion dressed working girls standing on the side of the road - and not the kind that drive tractors if you know what I mean! It must be a tough way to make a living I reckon but there were plenty of them. We reached Budapest at around 5pm and, with the aid of a map we picked up at Eger, managed to drive more-or-less straight to the camping ground about 6km north of the centre. I had to walk half a km up the road to the money machine because they didn’t take Visa and I took out 50000 Forints - gulp! We decided to stay four nights so we could give Budapest a good bash without being too rushed and the train line was only 5 min walk so we could just leave Dobby and walk. The camping ground was huge but three quarters of it was no longer used and in disrepair but there were lots of trees and good shade. (It was just a pity that they didn’t clean the toilets and showers every day because they were a little stinky)
Next day was a bit of a rest day after the driving of the last two
Budapest
Matthias Church under restoration and we had a bit of a sleep in. Later on we went for a wander down to see our old friend the Danube. This part of the river north of the city wasn’t well developed but it did have a few cafes so we stopped for a quiet pilsner before heading back. Read and caught up with a bit of blogging in the afternoon and planned our next two days. A Top Deck tour bus turned up and set up their tents so we had plenty of other English speaking tourists around which was sort of nice.
Next day (Sunday) we tried to buy tickets for the train at the automatic machine but it wouldn’t give me change and ate my 500 Forints! We walked to the next stop and found a newsstand, bought tickets and finally jumped on the train. Budapest was originally two cities on either side of the river - Buda on the west bank and Pest on the east bank. We were wandering around Buda today and were going to do Pest on Monday. We walked up the hill and up the pale stone steps next to the ‘Fisherman’s Bastion’ (under restoration) to the magnificent
Budapest
Chain Bridge and St Stephen's Basilica from Buda Castle Matthias Church (also under restoration) to the Castle Quarter. This was an old cobbled street with shops, museums, monuments, churches, cafes, historical buildings - and people. It was a nice walk with great views over the Danube and we had a nice lunch at one of the cafes. After lunch we were walking past the entrance to the Buda Castle Labyrinth and decided to take a look. It was a 1200m long cave and cellar network running under Buda Castle which was naturally formed some half a million years ago and over the last few hundred years has had walls built and was used for various purposes from wine cellars to torture chambers. It was now just a tourist attraction and Jac plucked up all her courage and came with me, it was quite cool despite recent sculptures pretending to be ancient which were a bit tasteless. We then went down to the river and walked down to and over Chain Bridge, the first bridge in Budapest built in 1849 and rebuilt in 1949 after the war. From here we backtracked all the way back to the train. We considered staying out until after dark but we were both pretty
Budapest
Parliament House from Buda side (note restoration work on right) much walked out and it was still about 2 hours to go so we headed back to the campsite and bought a nice bottle of red to enjoy with dinner.
After a good night’s sleep we had a leisurely breakfast and watched the Top Deck group pack up all their tents and bus on out. We then jumped on the train to the city, then caught a tram which took us nearer to Gellért Hill which I think is the highest point in the city. We walked up (Jac says up and up and up and up….) to the citadel at the top and took in the view - we also bought a couple of souvenirs before walking back down and across Erzsébet Bridge to take a wander around the Pest side of the city. First stop was a little café for a local brew and a bite to eat, we also tried what is said to be the biggest selling aperitif in Europe called Unicum. The beer was great but the other was….. lets say an acquired taste. (absolute s**t I believe were Jac’s exact words!) St Stephen’s Basilica was amazing and Andrássy Ave (the Fifth Ave of Budapest)
Budapest
The Danube River from the Citadel with Erzsebet, Chain and Margit Bridges was quite cool. There are three underground metro lines in Budapest and one was reported to be Continental Europe’s first so we thought we should take a look. It ran directly underneath Andrássy Ave and was only one flight down so had low ceilings and the stations were all tiled and really quaint. Nothing like the grandiose Moscow Metro stations but I guess 125 years ago they would have just dug a trench, put down a railway and stuck a road on top, but it was quite cool nevertheless. After the return trip on the M1 we walked all the way back to the train station (in hindsight we should have taken the M2 instead!) and caught the train back to the campsite which strangely seemed a little lonely without all the Top Deck tents next door. Another long day with a lot of walking meant that after dinner and showers we were ready to hit the sack.
Tuesday 26th (bacon and eggs for breakfast!) we packed up and left the campsite heading north along the Danube River. There is a particularly picturesque spot on the Danube Bend at Visegrád just 20km north of Budapest, so we headed there and
Budapest
Buda Castle from the Citadel drove up to the castle on the hill. The first King of Hungary, St Stephen, apparently established his stewardship here and the restored castle is now a museum but the views over the Danube Bend were spectacular. We drove on following the Danube along the Hungary/Slovakia border for about 100km before turning in a more southerly direction towards the Austrian border. The roads were pretty good but there were many towns on the way which made progress fairly slow at times, and there were more working girls along the way as well, so it was about 7.30pm when we reached the border and stopped to spend our last Hungarian Forints on a couple of beers (which we took with us).
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