Budapest
Since we were clearly old pros at the old overnight train journey now, there was no messing around on the Prague to Budapest trip - we got our cabin and were tucked up in bed within about half an hour of leaving. Basically, we did not make the same mistakes twice. See? We can be smart sometimes! So even though it remains quite strange to sleep in a bed on a train, we managed to get more sleep than previously. The train was very lurchy though, and I quite often woke up thinking that now, now would be the time it got a bit too cocky, lurched a bit too far and, hello ground! However, when it wasn't lurching it did have a strangely lulling rocking motion. Like I was in a giant cradle or something. Passport control woke us up twice this time - I think because we went through Austria (we think there was a stop in Vienna), although the checks seemed quite close to each other. And the second time they didn't even open the passports! The train journey was longer and started out later than our first overnighter, which meant that we didn't have to wake up at quite such a mad crazy hour. We did do the getting up an hour before we were due in thing again though. However, this time we used the time wisely. I had a full body wash with a flannel and put all fresh clothes on. I think I also put my contacts in. Pete did similar, and wonder of wonders, we actually felt human when we finally hit Budapest.
Not feeling up to figuring out the metro system in Budapest, we decided to walk to the hostel. It turned out to be quite a long way. And there was a metro stop right by it. Doh. Still, we got there eventually. And even though, again, we couldn't check in (till after ten this time, so slightly better) there were at least sofas for us to wait on! Also, the man on reception left the breakfast stuff out for a bit longer so we could have some... which was nice! The hostel we were staying in was called Red Bus. It wasn't especially amazing but the room was clean and big. Boys and girls had separate bathrooms though, and I don't know what the boys' bathroom was like, but the girls' was a bit grotty. Not really dirty, just very aged. Still, it did us okay. We spent a few hours just chilling out in our (Ikea furnished, of course) room.
Our room was actually the one with the sign in it. It was tempting to steal the sign as a souvenir (we didn't though!).
About two-ish we decided to do some exploring, so we headed towards Andrássy út, which is basically a big boulevard with lots of shops, restaurants and interesting buildings on it. It runs from about two minutes away from where our hostel was, all the way up to Heroes' Square. However, before we actually got onto Andrássy út, we spotted St. Stephen's Basilica, and so we headed over there first.
Outside St. Stephen's.
Inside St. Stephen's.
The main "attraction" in St Stephen's is the Holy Dexter.
And by Holy Dexter I mean the mummified hand of St. Stephen.
Nice, no? Still we were there so we figured we might as well take a look. It's in a glass show case in a chapel at the rear of the main church. There were lots of people looking at it, and a man standing at the front shouting at people who used cameras with flash. There was also a box at the front where you could put in some money and, hey presto! The show case lights up, as though touched my an angel! Ooooh. Can we say tacky? Mmm, yes. It was actually fairly amusing because everyone was telling everyone else that they weren't allowed to use a flash. Umm yeah okay, got that! Shut up and mind your own business! I took a photo (without flash!) and then this couple started babbling at me in god knows what language. I replied ever so eloquently, "Huh?! I don't speak whatever you're talking" and then walked away. Charming, am I not? In all honesty, and no disrespect to the old scabby hand with it's tacky lighting, I think the windows of the chapel were more interesting than the hand. They were stunning. Nothing special in the design, just the colours were so vibrant.
The basilica from inside the church. This isn't actually the basilica you see from outside the church, it's sort of the basilica nestled in that one you see.
As we were heading out of St Stephen's we passed a lift, and realised we could go up to the basilica! Without climbing a stupid tower! And so we got tickets and did. It turned out there was a bit of climbing, but really nothing to major, and it was actually inside the basilica which was kind of cool. The views towards the river and palace weren't amazing, but we got a nice view of Gellert Hill which would eventually climb.
Gellert Hill is the one with all the trees and the statues at the top. Not that there are actually any other hills in this picture...
So eventually we finally made it onto Andrássy út and took a nice leisurely stroll up there, stopping at an Italian restaurant (I know, I know!) for lunch/dinner. We got to see the Hungarian State Opera House and Oktogon (a cross roads where the buildings form an octagon) and then just a few houses, offices and shops before coming out onto Heroes' Square. Heroe's Square is umm, a big rectangular shaped place.
Okay, so not the best description. Pictures work better than words here.
On either side is some sort of an art gallery/museum, in the very middle is a statue of the angel Gabriel, and then behind this are various statues of - I assume - Hungarian heroes.
Hero.
Behind Heroes' Square is a big leafy park type area which we decided to have a wander round. We came upon some really beautiful miniature castle-type buildings...
...with cool roof statues...
...and accompanying church, and just behind this was a lake with loads of ducks. We found some seats and sat by the lake for quite a while just chatting and watching the ducks. The sun was going down so it wasn't too hot nor too cold, it was just very peaceful and beautiful.
Purdy.
When we finally got moving again we headed still further away from Heroes' Square, just to try and locate the thermal baths. We did this successfully and then strolled back along the walls of the zoo! Had some fun spotting a few animals (I think we got a giraffe, monkey and possibly rhino?). I was feeling lazy tired by this point, so we decided to get the metro back. Except, the metro station didn't have any ticket machines that would accept notes (and we had no change given that this was our first cash purchase in Hungary!), so we walked down to the next metro station and managed to get a single there.
We missed a trick in Budapest, because we just kept buying singles for our metro trips. It wasn't like they were expensive (something like 60p), but we probably could have saved a bit of money had we bought sets of ten. Ah well. I liked the metro in Budapest because it played funky music before announcing the stops, heh.
Just opposite the metro stop by our hostel there was a supermarket. Given that we'd had a late lunch/early dinner, we decided to just grab a few picky bits for the evening. Then we spent the evening in the hostel just chilling and had an early night.
The next day we started out by going back to the train station and attempting to reserve our seats to Vienna. I say attempting because OH. MY. GOD. The queues! Only about five ticket office windows were open (and then one closed when it had a huge queue because, lunch time don't you know?!). After a while we realised that the reason it was taking so long? Was because they had ONE COMPUTER BETWEEN THEM. ONE. COMPUTER. We eventually decided to give up and try again later when, hopefully it would be a bit quieter... otherwise we'd be spending the whole day there!
Instead, we headed over to the Buda side of the river via the Chain Bridge, to check out Castle Hill and all that is on it. Happily the funicular railway was fully functioning in Budapest, so it took no time to get up there. And okay, I guess I can't mention the funicular railway (or funky railway as we call it) without admitting that they do kind of freak me out a bit. Pete was looking out the window all like, 'Come and have a look!' and I was all like, 'Umm, no thank you, I shall remain sitting down away from the window so I don't have to think about the fact that we are going against gravity and if that bit of string with a weight that is hauling us up breaks, gravity WILL TAKE REVENGE'. Yeah, I'm a scientist but I don't always trust science. Obviously gravity did not take revenge. At the top we paused to scope out the place on a viewing platform just by the funicular railway station and some old bloke tried to get us to hire him as a tour guide. We said no thanks, but he wouldn't accept that answer because we hadn't heard him out. Eventually Pete just interrupted and said again, NO, and the bloke got in a huff because we were being rude. Yeah, whatever.
View over Pest from the funicular railway station.
So we went through an archway and down some steps to what we thought would let us explore the palace... and there was rubbish everywhere. We were very surprised, firstly, that people had so little respect for a tourist attraction, and secondly, that nobody kept the place clean. However as we carried on wandering, we slowly realised that there must have been some sort of concert in the grounds the previous evening (the stage was a bit of a clue...) so I guess it's not always that littered. There wasn't really a lot to the palace grounds... I'm not sure if you could go inside the actual palace, I think probably you could but just to places like art galleries (and we are not so much for the art). It started to rain when we were walking along some castle walls and there was nowhere to take cover... well, there was a posh cafe, but we didn't want to buy anything from there. By this time though, I had a headache, so actually we did want to buy a drink... just not an overpriced one! So we kept on plodding and came across a small store were we could get some water. By the time we came out of the store the rain had pretty much stopped. We carried on down the lane, headed for Fishermen's Bastion et al. We came out on a church with a beautiful roof, which could only be Matthias Church.
I seriously love these rooves.
Then we saw St. Stephen's statue and finally all the walls and Fishermen's Bastion.
Fishermen's Bastion. It was kind of deserted round the actual bastion, which seemed really strange.
We didn't go up Fishermen's Bastion, mainly because the view over Pest was already impressive.
I like this photo because it was unexpected and so I was completely off my guard.
There was also some man with an eagle that people could hold, which was random. I felt sorry for the eagle, because I'm dorky like that.
Well how would you like to be kept in the dark and handled by loads of random humans all day?
After spending some time admiring the rather beautiful Parliament buildings, we carried on our wanderings (I really need to think of a new word. I am very conscious of the constant use of the word 'wander') and saw the Magdalen Tower, Vienna Gate and National Archives. It took quite a while for us to identify all these things though, given that we seemed to be working backwards to the guidebook for no apparent reason. We headed back towards the palace, stopping for a while to eat a sandwich each (prepared by us that morning) and then took the funky railway back down to the Chain Bridge.
It seemed kind of stupid to me that we had to come all the way down from Castle Hill, only to have to go all the way back up Gellert Hill which is right (well, kind of) next to it! However, that's how it is. It sounded quite mystical, this Gellert Hill because to get there you have to "take the stairs leading up behind the waterfall". For the record, the steps don't technically go behind the waterfall. Although there is a cool moment where you're on top of the waterfull. Why we insisited on climbing quite so many bloody hills and towers I do not know. All in the quest for a great view I guess. Gellert Hill really wasn't as bad as Petrin Hill. On the other hand, it was much worse. There were alternating steps and paths, and steps really don't make things easier! Also, there had clearly been some windy days because there were a couple of times when trees had fallen across the path. Yeah, there were lots of breaks on this climb... even more than when we went up Petrin Hill. I think it was just because I was still feeling headachey and had hit my wall (of tiredness. This would happen every few days with one or the other of us so we sort of got used to it, although they never lasted very long and could usually be fixed with a nice long sit and some food), so was in a bit of a bad mood. We did finally get to the top though, and it was nice, if overcast (looks like rain!). We sat at the top for a very long time, finishing off the sandwiches and just... recovering. It's fairly amusing to look at the photos of me from this day, because I'm never smiling and I can tell exactly what I was thinking at the time.
"Fucking hills."
"Fucking women."
At the top of Gellert Hill is the Citadella (which we didn't go in) and the Independence Monument (which we did go to see).
Check out those rain clouds! We had no umbrella.
We walked round the walls of the Citadella before finally feeling able to make the return journey. However, instead of going down through all the trees (the way we came up) we decided to go down the way all the coaches get up to Gellert Hill. Yes, there is a road. As soon as we got to the road and started to make our way down, it started raining. And when I say it started raining, I mean raining. Whilst the foresty route was a pain, it probably would have kept us a bit drier than going down the road! Not that it would ultimately make any difference I guess, given that we would have got soaked when we came out of the trees anyway. Please let it be known that walking in wet flip flops is hard. When we eventually got to the bottom, we took shelter for a brief period before realising we might as well just keep on now. So we did. And then the thunder and lightning started. And we had to cross a big metal bridge. Ignoring fears of the bridge being struck by some of the huge lightning, it was quite exhilirating. As soon as we got onto the bridge I took off my flip flops, which made things so much easier.
We successfully made it back to the hostel, soaked to the skin but... I was in a better mood! We stripped off and put fresh clothes on, chilled for a bit. Then we decided to see if we still had time for a dip in the thermal baths up by Heroes' Square. This time we sensibly took the metro. However, we didn't get there in time (I had misread the times the previous day), so we instead we headed to the train station again to make a second attempt to reserve some seats. Fortunately this time we were successful - there were hardly any queues, thankfully, although it still took a good half hour to get through the two groups buyung tickets ahead of us! From there we decided to go and see Parliament by night... which was good (although again with the not knowing how my camera works in the dark!).
Budapest's parliament building always makes me think of Freddie Mercury.
Also had a nice view of Buda all lit up over the river. On the way back to the hostel I really wanted some chips, so we ended up stopping at a Burger King and getting a whole meal each, heh. Then, since we had a very early morning planned, bed time!
We got up really early on our last day in Budapest... because we were determined to visit the thermal baths (Széchenyi Baths, for the record), and we wanted to do so before we had to check out at ten! We were there and in the baths by about quarter past seven and... oh! Just, oh! I'm sure it would have been good at any time, but that early in the morning, when the air was still crisp and a bit chilly it was amazing. It was definitely worth getting up that early for! There were several different baths, the first one we went in was heated to about 40 degrees. The second felt really quite cold after that, however it was still 30 degrees! Also, the second one was cool because there was a bit in the middle that was like a whirlpool... so much fun! And then the whirlpool would be turned off and the whole pool would turn into one giant jacuzzi! It was great. After a while, we decided to explore the indoor bits... first the sauna, which we stayed in for approximately one minute. Turns out we're not really sauna people. Then there was a smaller pool, heated to 50 degrees! Ahh, it was like a bath! Well, like one of my baths... Pete likes slightly cooler baths, so we didn't stay there too long. We finished off back in the 40 degrees pool before deciding it was time to head back. Then came a horribly awkward moment in the changing rooms, the communal changing rooms I might add. I was watching other people as I got changed, trying to figure out general thermal baths etiquette, and to my horror it seemed that most people were tipping the woman who gave you your locker key. I say to my horror because I had no money - Pete had it all! I delayed for a while and eventually just sucked it up and... rushed out when she was busy with someone else. Coward. Pete appparently didn't even think about tipping his chappy. Feeling especially fresh and perky, we headed back to the hostel for a final pack up and check out. Then we caught the metro up to the train station. Best start to the day ever.
I think we spent just about the right amount of time in Budapest. Enough to see all the main sights and of course get some thermal bath time in. However, I would love to go back because I think that Budapest has a whole heap of interesting history, and I'd love to be able to spend more time learning about it and seeing it in more detail. Also: thermal baths love. Have to go back just for that. And honestly, if you go to Budapest you should do what we did almost by accident - go to the baths very early in the morning. It is heaven.