If Prague was a tourist trap, Budapest is a business center. So I know after that line, you expect me to say that we had a pretty boring time in Budapest, but in reality it was really awesome. Friday, Mary Brooke, Marjorie, and I got in around 4ish and we walked a couple laps around the center of the city, went up Gellert hill on the 'Buda' side of the Danube, and went to and admired St. Stephens Basilica (in Pest) for a while. After sunset, we walked down to the river again and waded a little in the river. It was quite refreshing. The funniest thing about Friday was that I went to the bank when we got there and apparently I had multiplication and division issues because I took out the smallest denomination: 1000 Forints. I thought I was getting roughly 40 Euros but when my Kebab wrap was 600 Forints, I realized I ACTUALLY got out about 4 Euros. OOPS!!
Saturday, we did a lot! It was extremely hot, and now all three of us have some extreme tan lines. We got up and caught a "hop-on, hop-off" bus and went up to Heroes park to the sounds of Hungarian Dance No. 5. We looked at the cool monument, walked around the little castle and park, row boated for a half hour, and then went and found a giant hourglass! To our best guess, the hourglass measured a year (since the sand was about half gone and we're in June). It was gi-normous!
So then we got back on the bus and crossed over to Buda to see the castle...on the hill...JUST like Prague and Salzburg! Imagine that. Well, this one was the most 'castle-like' of all of them. It had a royal palace, a big church (Matthias Church), and a peasant quarter, all in the same walls. It was very cool! We enjoyed the excellent views over the river at the Parliament building (the most excellent neo-gothic building I think I've seen in Europe) while drinking some lemonade in the shade and listening to a violinist and a hammered dulcimer.
After the castle, the bus took us up to the Citadel, on Gellert hill. It gave us the best view of the castle, the river, and the parliament amongst the rest of the city. Finally, the bus took us to Margaret island, where we put our feet in a spring fountain and grabbed a decent (unfortunately not Hungarian) dinner. Ordering was tricky; the menu was printed in Magyar (Hungarian), German, and English, but the waiter only spoke Hungarian. Thus, when Marjorie tried to ask for the waiter's recommendation, we all just kind of stared at each other for an awkward minute.
Dinner finally done, we walked over the bridge from the island to Pest (the East side of the river...maybe I should have said that earlier). We wanted to catch "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" the musical in Hungarian, but when we got to the theatre 15 minutes before curtain, hot, sweaty, and gross, we decided to pass. Instead, we went to a grocery store and picked up a few random unique snacks and hung out at a park. The sausage we obtained was a bust because it had chunks of solid (thus inedible) white bits...fat maybe? I don't know. So that was the end of Saturday.
Sunday was yet another toasty day. Two Floridians from the hostel joined us in our search for the famous Statue Park (Szorpark). When the Soviets pulled out of Hungary, they didn't want the statues to be destroyed, so the Hungarians took all the statues in Budapest and put them in a random park about 5 miles outside of town, in the middle of nowhere. So after some interesting use of public transportation, we admired all the statues and got lots of interesting pictures. I enjoyed seeing Lenin's feet (surely you've seen the picture of his body being pulled down) on a plinth all alone.
To conclude our weekend, we went out for an excellent Hungarian lunch. The three of us split 3 dishes- a pork in cream sauce with dumplings, Hungarian Goulash soup, and a fish I'd never heard on pasta with a mysterious orange-colored sauce (it was the waiter's recommendation to me). All were to die for! Best of all, I loved the spicy paprika sauce served with bread. After two slices of bread, my face was on fire for the next 15 minutes, but it was sooooo good! Well, after that, we walked back to the hostel, grabbed our stuff, then headed for the train station. It was a wonderful weekend and we enjoyed every minute (except the ridiculous heat, which has followed us to Vienna!)!!!
Well, one week to go in Vienna; one week following in Rotterdam/Paris. This week will be really busy and really hot, but as always, promises to be great fun!
1 comment:
Terrific account! It sure sounds like you had lots of fun!
I think you'll find you saw Stalin's feet, not Lenin's feet (Stalin, not Lenin, was the brutal Russian dictator of WWII). It was a massive statue of Stalin that was built for Stalin as a 70th birthday present (gee, what else do you give a brutal, cruel, egotistical dictator who has everything already, because he's taken what he wants by force?) from the Hungarian people, completed in 1951 and pulled down in Hungary's October Revolution of 1956.
We can't wait to see the photos!
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