After Vienna, we hopped on the train for the 3-hour trip to Budapest. We arrived Sunday night at about 7:00 PM. After checking into our holiday apartment, which was in a great location one block from the Danube in between Parliament and the Chain Bridge, we headed out for dinner.Budapest is a beautiful city. It is split into two parts, Buda and Pest, by the Danube River. Buda is on the west and contains the Royal Palace and some old parts of the city. Pest, where we were staying, is more modern, and despite that, possibly more beautiful.
For dinner, we headed to a Kosher restaurant we read about, and after searching around a little, were finally able to find it. When we walked in, however, we were the only customers there, and the waiter told us it was vegetarian food only. This surprised us, because the guide book mentioned a number of meat dishes, but we thought "what the heck" and ate there anyways. We found out later that our trip to Budapest coincided with The Nine Days, a Jewish period of mourning where meat (and apparently bathing) is forbidden. The food was okay, but nto what we had hoped for. After dinner we discovered a little more of Pest beforeheading back to the apartment after a long day.
On Monday, we went out for a nice breakfast at a café in Pest before crossing the Chain Bridge to Buda, where we checked out the Royal Palace and the castle district for much of the afternoon. After that, we checked out a Communist-themed pizza restaurant in an area of Buda where it kind of looked like they were still stuck in the Cold War. It wasn't the most beautiful part of town, and we definitely preferred the more upscale Pest side, but it was interesting to get a glimpse at what life may have looked like in Budapest under the communist regimes of the 70's and 80's.
On Tuesday, we checked out a couple of tourist attractions, the Terror House, the Great Market Hall, and St. Stephen's Basilica. The Terror House is a building in Pest that served as the headquarters for both the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party (basically the Nazis of Hungary) and the communist State Protection Authority. Both of these groups used the building to interrogate, torture and imprison people that got in their way or disagreed with their way of life. It was interesting to learn more about this, since internationally, you don't often hear much about what happened in Hungary during those times.
The Great Market Hall is Budapest's largest public market. Picture Granville Island, only bigger and with every second stall selling Hungarian Paprika. It was pretty cool. Later in the afternoon we checked out St. Stephen's Basilica, and we were wowed. It's one of the more beautiful cathedrals we've seen in our travels, with a huge interior, a beautiful dome, and mostly marble walls and columns inside. It was something.
Our night concluded with a nice dinner on a patio in Pest, where we finally got our first taste of authentic Hungarian Goulash, as well as the Hungarian digestif "Unicum". Let's just say the Goulash went down easier.
We headed back to Vienna on Wednesday for our flight back to Zürich. Budapest was a beautiful city that we really loved, and wished we could have spent more time in. Our next planned trip is a weekend in Prague. If its anywhere as nice as Budapest, it should be a great time.
For dinner, we headed to a Kosher restaurant we read about, and after searching around a little, were finally able to find it. When we walked in, however, we were the only customers there, and the waiter told us it was vegetarian food only. This surprised us, because the guide book mentioned a number of meat dishes, but we thought "what the heck" and ate there anyways. We found out later that our trip to Budapest coincided with The Nine Days, a Jewish period of mourning where meat (and apparently bathing) is forbidden. The food was okay, but nto what we had hoped for. After dinner we discovered a little more of Pest beforeheading back to the apartment after a long day.
On Monday, we went out for a nice breakfast at a café in Pest before crossing the Chain Bridge to Buda, where we checked out the Royal Palace and the castle district for much of the afternoon. After that, we checked out a Communist-themed pizza restaurant in an area of Buda where it kind of looked like they were still stuck in the Cold War. It wasn't the most beautiful part of town, and we definitely preferred the more upscale Pest side, but it was interesting to get a glimpse at what life may have looked like in Budapest under the communist regimes of the 70's and 80's.
On Tuesday, we checked out a couple of tourist attractions, the Terror House, the Great Market Hall, and St. Stephen's Basilica. The Terror House is a building in Pest that served as the headquarters for both the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party (basically the Nazis of Hungary) and the communist State Protection Authority. Both of these groups used the building to interrogate, torture and imprison people that got in their way or disagreed with their way of life. It was interesting to learn more about this, since internationally, you don't often hear much about what happened in Hungary during those times.
The Great Market Hall is Budapest's largest public market. Picture Granville Island, only bigger and with every second stall selling Hungarian Paprika. It was pretty cool. Later in the afternoon we checked out St. Stephen's Basilica, and we were wowed. It's one of the more beautiful cathedrals we've seen in our travels, with a huge interior, a beautiful dome, and mostly marble walls and columns inside. It was something.
Our night concluded with a nice dinner on a patio in Pest, where we finally got our first taste of authentic Hungarian Goulash, as well as the Hungarian digestif "Unicum". Let's just say the Goulash went down easier.
We headed back to Vienna on Wednesday for our flight back to Zürich. Budapest was a beautiful city that we really loved, and wished we could have spent more time in. Our next planned trip is a weekend in Prague. If its anywhere as nice as Budapest, it should be a great time.
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