Our first trip to Budapest

Sorry about the lack of recent posts, but Daniel and I have just returned from 4 days in Budapest. The trip into the city took about 2.5 hours. We really enjoyed cruising along the autobahn at 130kms per hour, although it was pretty scary to see how many people seemed to be driving much, much faster than that!

Once we arrived in Budapest we spent a harrowing hour trying to find our hotel. Our GPS unit kept trying to steer us into a construction site and our attempts to find an alternative route were repeatedly thwarted by Budapest's numerous one-way streets. Happily, we eventually found our way and we are now experts at deciphering Hungarian street signs. The give-way "rules", however, remain a mystery.

On Monday we set out to do some sightseeing. Our hotel was just across the road from a major train station, so we decided to give the public transport system a go. After some intitial issues with the ticketing system we soon found ourselves
travelling on the underground train system - called the Metro - and we rode into city centre.

From there we headed towards the water and soon found ourselves walking along the banks of the mighty Danube. We walked across the famous Széchenyi lánchíd (chain bridge) and arrived in the castle district. The castle lies at the top of a seriously big hill, so we took the lazy option and rode an ancient cable car - called the Castle Hill Funicular - to the top (first picture).

The castle itself was quite fascinating. Over its long history it has been destroyed and redeveloped many times and it is currently being used
as a museum. In spite of its turbulent history, some of the castle's original medieval walls and chambers are still intact and were recently discovered by archaelogists. The current castle is shown in the second picture.

The third picture shows a large water fountain that decorates one of the castle's forecourt areas. It shows a group of hunters lead by the King, their hounds, a killed deer, a hawker and a young peasant girl with a doe. The fountain is based on a Hungarian legend in which a young peasant girl named Ilonka met and fell in love with the King while he was on a hunting expedition. Personally I don't really understand why she would find a guy who has just slaughtered a harmless deer attractive, but maybe that's not really the point. In any case, it is a particularly impressive work of art.

After the castle, we explored a little more of the city and got caught in a huge downpour on our way back to the hotel.
I've always really liked the way that Melbourne looks and feels when it's raining and Budapest has a similar sort of vibe.

On Tuesday we set out to do some more exploring. First up we went to Memento Park, a dedicated retirement home for many of the city's communist statues. In addition to the typical statues of Lenin and Marx and Engels, there were a number of quite dramatic pieces like the one shown in picture four, as well as many depicting the country's war heroes and their exploits.

Next, we visited Gellért Hill, home to the city's impressive Citadella, as well as restaurants, shops and market stalls. In its heyday, the Citadella played an important role in WWII and we took a tour of one of its large bunkers which now houses a war museum. Somehow I doubt this will be the last war-themed museum that we encounter in Europe.

The views from the upper walls of the Citadella were quite amazing and we were able to look back out over the Danube and across to the Buda side of the city (picture five). The thing that really struck me about the panorama was the absence of any really tall buildings. There are definitely no skyscrapers in Budapest. In fact, the tallest buildings in the city are all churches.

After two days of sightseeing, Daniel and I decided to spend the rest of Tuesday afternoon relaxing at the Széchenyi baths. After getting changed in a private cubicle, we made our way to the three central pools. The large central pool was for lap swimming and had the coldest water (about 20 degrees celcius), while the pools on each end were much warmer (about 27 and 37 degrees). There were also a number of saunas and smaller thermal pools and spas inside the surrounding buildings.

The outside pools were a lot of fun as each pool had its own quirky bits. For example, one of the end pools had underwater bubbles, a whirlpool and water jets while the pool at the other end had a big water fountain and chessboards. Yup, that's right - chessboards! If you look closely at the bottom of picture six you can see a group of old men clustered around the in-pool chessboards. How awesome is that?

As hard as it was to top the thermal baths experience, we did actually manage to find something even more fun to do in Budapest on Wednesday.

We picked Iago up from the airport cargo centre!

We were both a little anxious about how he'd look after his mammoth journey from Melbourne. Would he be tired? Would he be confused? Would he recognise us?

But we needn't have worried. As they brought his cage out on a forklift, he heard our voices and turned around to see us. His tail was wagging like crazy and he definitely knew who we were. We're so, so, so pleased that he is now in Hungary with us. And I think picture seven shows that he is pretty happy to be here too!

Awwwww.....

We are heading back to Budapest again next week for Daniel's orientation program. Iago and I have also been invited to attend, so I think it's going to be a fun week.

- Amanda