Mid-Semester Break Vacation - Leg 2 - Budapest, Hungary

After leaving Vienna we only had a couple of hours' drive to get to Budapest. The drive was not all that exciting or scenic. It was pretty flat and small trees for the most part. Cindy and I both commented that parts of it might be mistaken for Texas. We did see a few wind farms too.

The German highways have a couple of advantages over the fellow European countries. We all know about the speed limits. In Germany, you can go as fast as you want on the autobahns. There are many areas that do have speed limits posted for highway intersections and electronic signage they can control if traffic is heavy in a given area. All other countries there is a speed limit and in most cases it is 130Kph maximum. In addition German highways do not require tolls or passes. For this trip, as soon as we passed into Austria we had to stop and get a 10 day pass that cost around 8€ to drive on their roads, and this was the case for Hungary too. To complicate things further, Hungary also uses a different currency, the Forint. More about that later.

This tunnel and bridge were right next to our hotel. This is the Chain Bridge that is a well known site in Budapest. Below are a few pictures taken from our hotel room at various times during our stay. You can see the Chain Bridge and across the Danube river is the Buda Castle. The Intercontinental Hotel was a very good place to stay and we really enjoyed the view and the central location.

The first night we just had time to get checked in to the hotel and get settled before dinner. We walked down to a restaurant on a boat outside of our hotel called the Spoon. There we had a nice dinner with dessert. The pic below of Katherine was right after she put a scoop of ice cream in her mouth. I think she thought someone else was going to eat it first.

This meal was the first time I ever dropped five figures for dinner. It was rough getting used to the currency in Hungary. 1€ is equal to about 292 Hungarian Forints, so something that costs 10€ is about 3000 Forints. We had to take a picture of one of our dinner receipts and of the 10,000 Forint currency.

This was by far the most expensive meal during our trip. Cindy and I celebrated our last night in Budapest with a fabulous bottle of wine. More about that restaurant on day 3.

Day 1:

I found a web site that provided various walking tours with maps and step by step instructions of what to see. The first day we set out early and walked across the Chain Bridge to the Buda side for the Castle Hill walking tour.

I love this picture. It looks fake but it's not.

 

After the bridge, the first step was to take the funicular to the top of the hill. This was opened in 1870 and it was well worth the Forints that it cost to save me from hiking up the hill. This was a very good view of Pest back across the river.

 

Once on top the Buda Castle is right there next to us, but our walking tour took us in the other direction. Next door is the Sandor Palace which is the office of the President, thus the armed guards. as we walked around the side of this building there was another set of guards and as we got to the end of the building we started hearing drums. We were just in time to see the ceremony for changing the guards.

A little ways down the road we came to Matthias Church. From our hotel room view you can see Buda Castle in front of us and this church is off to the right on a hill with the tower visible. This was an incredible church both outside and inside.

 

 

"The most magnificent monument in the church is the double sarcophagus of king Béla III and his wife Anne de Châtillon in the Trinity Chapel. The 12th century king was originally buried in Székesfehérvár; in 1848 archaeologists found his remains in the city's ruined cathedral and transported it to the Matthias Church in 1860." From http://www.aviewoncities.com

 

It was originally built in 1015 but later rebuilt into the Gothic style in the middle part of 1400's. We spent a lot of time here just trying to take it all in. The church is located next to the area known as Fisherman's Bastillion pictured below. It is a wall overlooking the river and the Pest side of the city. 

 This is the view after climbing the steps and looking over the wall. 
This statue was in the same area. It was a spur of the moment idea to get the kids to re´create the figure. It turned out pretty cute.

I had learned my lesson to keep everyone fed from the day before. We found a place to grab some lunch before anyone got too fussy from being hungry. It was around 11:30 but we were the only people in this restaurant. It was a nice quiet lunch and a good rest for the second half of our walking tour. The food was not the greatest that I ever tasted, but it was fine and pretty inexpensive too.

After lunch we set out to see a few more sites below that included the National Archives building and the Maria Magdelena Tower from the mid 13th century.

As we made the turn back towards the Buda Castle my guide map made mention of a labyrinth of tunnels under the Buda Castle. There was a normal door there with the address on it, as you walk up there is a staircase that is very steep. The stairs made a turn and kept going down. Eventually we found a place to buy a ticket to walk through the tunnels. 

At first it was just plain walls and tunnels dimly lit with not much to look at. Every once in a while we would see an update on where we were in the tunnel, a stone highlighted or the chair above not really knowing what it meant. There were also wax figures dressed up in period specific attire behind caged walls. We kept walking until we found a long section that was a dead end (the top right section of the map picture below). We went in that direction to check it out.

The lighting became progressively worse and a strange fog started to appear, we were also going further down. There was a blue light now and we started to hear organ music. Eventually the light was gone and the fog was so thick there was zero visibility. Katherine had my cell phone flashlight and Cindy was making her flash go off on her camera to try and find our way.

Then we came across this sign talking about Dracula. There was a round cage in one of the darkest rooms and I made the comment to the kids that "I wonder what escaped from that cage". They were already freaked out an I admit that I was not in a happy place. We finally turned around and found our way back to the regular area and after a few wrong turns we quickly scaled the stairs back to the surface. Later that evening I did some looking and found out that the real life person that Dracula is based on, Vlad Tepes or Vlad "The Impaler", had been captured and locked up in these tunnels by the Hungarian King in the 15th century. One web site also said that the fog was a natural occurrence. I was pretty sure I could smell stage fog at the time. Regardless it was pretty creepy, but I think we will all remember it for a while.

After that experience we found ourselves back at the Buda Castle with street food nearby. We bought a cinnamon and chocolate original funnel cake.

Where Cindy took the above picture was the backdrop for a medieval weapons challenge area. The guy had four weapons that you could test your skills on and David was eager for the chance. 

 

The first thing was what I would describe as a medieval throwing star. David did okay with it and quickly moved on to the spear. It was a little heavy for him but he gave it a good try. Next came the crossbow then the bow and arrow. The cross bow was the real thing. David learned how to load it and fire it and also caught on quickly to the bow. Take a look.

He got the bulls eye on both and earned a porcelain cup. He is posing with it in the picture with his sister, who just wanted to be in on the photo op.

Above are just a couple of pictures from around the castle grounds. David and I decided these were stone canon balls left over from historic battles. 

We found our way to the other side of the castle to a road that twisted and turned down the hill until we arrived at the foot of the Chain Bridge. Our hotel is in this picture, the brown building in between the other two large buildings. It was a lot of walking but we accomplished a lot of sight seeing. Buda, check off of the list, done.

Day 2:

Even after all of the walking the day before we were up and ready to go the next day. Today we had an even more ambitious schedule. We needed to complete the sites from two separate walking tours, one that went east 3.5km and one that circled the Pest area around the Danube.

The only way that we were going to get all of this done in a day was to utilize the public transportation system. We started out bright and early headed east down a popular road that was recognized in the late 1800's as a marvel of city planning. There were plenty of shops and sites along the way. Our primary destination on this route was Heroes Square and the city park and castle close to it.

Really close to our hotel was this beautiful church, St. Stephen's Basilica. 

We spent a good amount of time in here taking it all in. This was another place that just had amazing detail in every inch of space.

 

 In a side area, little chapel room we ran across this little artifact. No other description is necessary.

The "relic light" was not on when we got there. David noticed a little area talking about a relic light that you have to pay 200 Forints to get it turned on. We had no idea what would happen, and there was a guard on duty watching every move that we made. 200 Forints is less than a dollar so I gave it a try. Sure enough the relic lit up and Cindy had to fight her way past some people that jumped in the way to get their picture taken. Yep, even though I just spent Cindy's hard earned cash to turn on the darn light these people had no problem taking advantage. She did get her picture and we got out of the way for the remaining two minutes that the light stays on.

There were a couple of opera and ballet houses on the route (one pictured above), but none were open for public viewing. We kept on schedule and walking down the road. We finally to about halfway to Heroes Square before stopping for lunch, again, no fussy kids if they are fed. We then decided to jump on the underground for the rest of the way to Heroes Square. We ran into a problem at the ticket kiosk. I tried to get 24 hour passes but the machine only accepted coins. I did not have 5000 Forints in coins on me. I tried and tried, went back up to the street across the way back down on the other side to try the machine over there. Same problem. After 20 minutes we finally just jumped on the next train with the intention of buying the ticket at the next station. Luckily we did not get caught and I was able to still get the same 24 hour pass without getting busted on the train with no ticket. We are rebels.

 

This area was very nice and had a lot of tourists around. We took a couple of pictures then headed to the park area where the kids quickly noticed some playground equipment. David was talking the ear off of this poor kid. We asked later if the kid spoke English, David said no. They played together for a while. Katherine did good too, Cindy just caught her in a moment, after a little girl cut in front of her to go up this ladder.

 

This is a very large city park. There was an enormous ice skating rink ready to go, as soon as it is cold enough for ice. On this day it was about 70 degrees and beautiful.

After the playground we walked over to check out Vajdahunyad Castle. It was built as part of the Millennium celebration of Hungary and is based on several different landmarks in and around the country of Budapest. 

Walking in through the arch above we came across this guy below. He appears to be levitating and he was pretty good at it. We were talking about it for a while, how he was doing it and making it look so easy. He is a little freaky, but the kids still walked up to his bucket and gave him a tip.

We decided to take the train back to St. Stephen's Basilica to begin the second part of our walking tour. Here is a pic of us on the underground riding back.

There are a bunch of pigeons all over Europe, where we have been anyway. David and Katherine will run at them to make them fly away whether it is one of many. Sometimes they get mad at each other is they feel like one person is taking all of the pigeon scaring for themselves. In Vienna there was a huge covey being fed by a lady, they ran at them and scared them for 5 seconds. The lady was not happy, but the vermin came right back to her.

The two pictures above are from an area a short walk from the church. This was another park that the kids played at for a while, looked at this monument and also walked by the U.S. Embassy. It was cool to see but they had a big sign up warning not to take photographs. I can understand why, so we followed the rules. Very close to this area we saw another statue and as we got closer we recognized the figure, but thought, no, it can't be. Sure enough Cindy read the plaque, a statue of Ronald Reagan right there in Budapest. It was unveiled in 2011 as a tribute to his role is ending communism. Pretty cool.

This is a statue of Imre Nagy looking towards the Parliament building. He was the Prime Minister during the 1956 Revolution and was executed for his role. He has become a symbol of freedom for the Hungarian people.

This is the huge Parliament building that has been in some of the previous photos from the Buda side looking back towards Pest. There was construction all around it and the tickets to go inside were crazy expensive. We walked around it and found our way to a bus stop to take a ride over to Margaret Island. It is kind of like Central Park in Manhattan in that it is a huge piece of land with parks, jogging trails, swimming pools and water slides, etc., right in the middle of a big city. This park happens to be on a island on the Danube River.  

The bus took us all the way there where we explored for a while then decided to rent a rickshaw type vehicle the Hungarians call a bringóvárban. David and I pedaled while our princesses rode along. In thirty minutes we pedaled all the way to the far side of the island and back to the rental area. 

You can see some of the water slides through the trees in the above pic.

The pics below were accidental sight seeing places. We had covered a lot of ground today and attempted to head back to the hotel. To this point we have felt so fortunate with our experiences on public transportation. I thought it was odd that the little transit app on my smart phone was telling us to walk to the Buda side of the river to get to our hotel on the Pest side. I did not notice that it was telling us to get off at the Chain Bridge and walk across. We walked up to the bus stop and hopped on and about the time the bus started pulling away further and further from the Chain Bridge I realized that I had messed up. We got off a few stops later to reorganize. Walked across this other bridge that was two more bridges west of where we wanted to be and went down to the subway. Once there we were told that train was not running and to go get a bus. My app would not give me an option for a bus, it wanted me to take the train that was not running........now what? We got to a bus stop that had no indication of what buses stop there so we started to walk in the general direction of the hotel along the river in the hopes that a bus headed in that direction would be a good one to get on. Just as we walked away a bus turned the corner. We saw that it was a 2A bus that stops right in front of the hotel. All was good again.

After getting back to the hotel I had the bright idea that we should try to do a dinner cruise on the river. I checked with the concierge at the hotel and he had an option for us. He got the guy on the phone to make the reservation. I came very close to pulling the trigger on it until I found out it was a two and a half hour cruise that started at 8:30. After this day I know that none of us wanted that. I then asked him for a simple family place with authentic Hungarian choice. He made reservation at Tigris, a five minute walk from the hotel. This turned out to be one of the best meals ever as well as best overall restaurant experience. The owner/manager was keeping the kids entertained with magic tricks and the waiter was super knowledgeable and made great suggestions. This was a really nice restaurant, David called it fancy even. Yet they catered to our family and had some amazing food. 

  

 

Cindy and I enjoyed that bottle of wine more than any other before. It was a little pricey, but it was perfect for our last night in Hungary. We had a foie gras sampler platter prepared four different ways. The owner was showing David how to make a jumping frog out of paper and showed us this other creature that he made of out folder paper. Of course we had dessert too, and it was fabulous.

Day 3:

Are you still with me, need a potty break?

The reason we had to get so much done the day before was so we could pack up, check out of the hotel and head to the hills outside of Budapest for some kid fun time. These kids have been so great driving all over creation and walking around sight seeing with their lesser traveled parents. We wanted to give them a chance to have some fun. The first place I wanted to go was a chair lift to the top of a hill that overlooked all of the city. We got there too early and the place was not open yet. Everyone was cold at the bottom of the hill so we decided not to wait around just to be even more cold on top of the hill. We headed to our second destination, Challangeland. It is a ropes, zip line, obstacle course set up in the middle of a forest area. We drove to the area just fine but had trouble locating the place. We ended up driving by the Hungarian International School, which was cool to see. Finally we found the entrance to Challangeland and the kids loved it.

 

 

 

 

 

I think we were there for four of five hours, long enough where I could convince them it was time to get on the road to Salzburg. We had a five hour drive and did not arrive there until well after dark. Salzburg was part three of our adventure. A post will be coming soon with the pictures and details of those last two days of our trip. So what do you think of Budapest? If was not what I expected, we really enjoyed it. Most of the people that we interacted with spoke English and were very nice. This is not the first place most people have in mind when visiting Europe, but I am glad that we visited.