Our last day in Prague we explored a few more coffee shops and walked around Wenceslas Square again. We also saw the big museum from outside and ate at Como (highly recommend). We had to kill time until our overnight train departed for Budapest. Through the Euro Rail pass, I bought an extra ticket in advance (while still in the U.S.) to cover the portion of the trip where we passed through Slovakia. The bed cabins were fine and worth the time savings. There were 3 bunk beds but only 2 of us, luckily. There is also a lock on the cabin door, so we were able to sleep without having to worry too much about thieves or villains.
The Budapest main train station was the most challenging place to get out of. Whenever you arrive in a new country, the biggest obstacle is usually getting out of the airport/station. You have to adapt, find your location and destination, and exchange currency if needed to buy tickets. There was not much written in English and when I asked for directions I would get pointed in a random direction. I got to the exchange place where a guy standing outside the counter offered to give me a better exchange rate than the counter. No thanks, I'm just exchanging $20.
We stayed in the Eurostar Budapest Center through our time in Budapest ($78/night). I loved this hotel and would highly recommend it. It's newly built, clean, sharp design, and heated bathroom floors! Yes, this means backpackers like myself can dry socks by laying them on the bathroom floor.
The Danube cuts Budapest into two cities. Buda is the fairytale-touristy old town where most people live, while Pest is the urban-industrial-business city center.
We ate at Cyrano for lunch. They had a tasty set menu. The art-mozaik festival was going on so we caught an outdoor orchestra performance while walking by the river (Duna korzó). We crossed the main bridge(Chain Bridge) into the Buda side. We opted to walk to the top of Buda Hill instead of taking the funicular train (Siklo) up. It was quite a climb. There we found the Buda Castle. Good view from the Fishermens Bastion. Other good views we climbed up to see on a separate occasion were the view from Janos Hegy (where the Elizabeth watchtower, or Erzsébet kilátó, is located), and the view from the Citadel at Gellert Hill (where we also brought bread and wine in water bottles for a nice sunset meal). Buda Hill had the Mestersegek Unnepe (Festival of Folk Art) happening the day we went. Not sure how it happened but we went through one of the entrances into the festival while sight seeing and skipped paying for entrance. People bring their arts and you walk from tent to tent. The basement of the Marriott or Hilton is where I had made reservations for a wine tasting experience. It took us 3 hours to find out it was in the basement of the hotel. That was a bad experience. No one had heard of the Faust wine cellar we went to because it is new. The wine tasting is quiet and the sommelier is very courteous. Tried Palinka for the first time. Tastes like fire. I read somewhere that the subway system is one of the oldest in Europe. You can also tell in person by the style of the train, and the absence of machines (the ticket checkers are people not machines). Be careful to only go through after you are sure you are on the right side. We almost had to buy another ticket because we were on the wrong side of the track, but the man was nice enough to be understanding of what happened (went to New York 6 months later and made the same mistakes, but the machines were not as nice).
Other buildings or sights we saw were the Parliament House, the Pesti Vigado, St Stephens Basilica, Mathias Church, Heroe's Square (an amazingly wide and open plaza), Central Market Hall (indoor farmer's market with the best Saurkraut in the world. So good I might want to go back to Hungary just for it) . And we got to meet my good friend Emily's cousin OG before we took off to the main train station.
Budapest photos here.
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