Budapest

Well, the weekend just gone was a Bank Holiday here in England. It was also a full year that I have been in the UK, another three to go! Hopefully now that Peter and I are a lot more settled we will get to do a lot more travelling, so Budapest you ask...

Saturday

We had a very early flight from Luton airport which meant we had to get up at 2am! So on 2hrs sleep we managed to survive the rest of the day, almost. We arrived in Budapest about 10am and got to our lovely clean hostel at about 11am. The hostel was a five storey building and we had a cosy room on the third floor. As tempting as it was to lie down and have a quick snooze we got out our guide books and brochures and tried to figure out what to do. We thought that it would be nice to do a day trip out of the city and so we booked a Danube Bend tour for Sunday. Following that organisation spree we headed out to pick up our opera tickets and have a bit of an explore around the city.

The opera thing was a bit of a whim really. I had read that the opera house was well worth a visit inside and so we had a look online and saw that there were two tickets available for the Saturday night to see Wagner's Opera A Nurnbergi Mesterdalnokok (I think that's in Hungarian, I have no idea what it is in English, or what it is about). We booked our tickets at a grand price of 800HUF, which equates to about £2. So our first stop of the day was the opera house and it was absolutely spectacular! Really amazing.

We picked up our tickets and then headed off in search of a city bus tour. We have decided that bus tours are a really great way of seeing a lot of things in a short space of time and it also helps to decide what you want to go back and see. On the tour we saw at least 15 different things, most of which we would have loved to have gone back too. This was my first European city (except Paris) so it was really amazing for me. There were so many spectacular buildings with so much history.

After the bus tour we headed back to the opera house to see our mystery opera. The inside was well worth the £2 ticket. It was magnificent. We do have a few photos so they will be on our photos page soon. The opera however was interesting. We had the worst seats (which we were expecting) so we could only see the back quarter of the stage (where the chorus hangs out). Needless to say we got a little bored, it was sung in German with Hungarian subtitles so we had no idea what was going on. I feel asleep for an hour and Peter feel asleep for the second hour. The music and singing was fantastic and all in all it was well worth the trip. We left at half time as there was a serious risk of someone snoring through the second half!

On the way back to the hostel we found a lovely restaurant and decided to have some dinner. We sat outside next to some Americans who were studying in Eastern Europe. They were pretty lively especially after a few drinks. After about an hour and a half waiting for our food our waiter come and told us that the kitchen had lost our order. So we reordered and eventually had a very yummy meal. We also got a free dessert which neither of us really needed!

After that we headed back to the hostel for an excellent nights sleep.

Sunday

This was the day of our day trip to the Danube Bend. We were picked up from our hostel at 9am. When we booked this tour we thought that it would be a group outing with a whole lot of other people, however it turned out that it was just the two of us and our tour guide.

The first stop was Esztergom. This used to be the capital of Hungry many many years ago. Our first place of interest was the Esztergom Basilica. This is a massive cathedral which is about 100m tall on the outside and 70m tall on the inside. This was the first huge church that I have seen so I don't think I'll forget it in a hurry. We climbed to the top of the dome and marvelled at the view. We could even see a bit of Slovakia which was just across the river.

Next up was Visegrad were the 'famous' Danube bend can be seen. I have no idea why it's famous but it is pretty spectacular to look at. We also had a quick look at some old palaces. These palaces were both in ruins due to land slides and the destruction by various rulers of Hungary. A little bit eerie. We had a traditional Hungarian lunch at a very touristy restaurant.

We then continued back towards Budapest and stopped of at our final stop Szentendre. This is known as an artists town and had a lovely little square (no photos of this one). We went to a ceramics museum that housed the works of Margit Kovacs. They were pretty amazing and a little sad. We also paid a visit to a diamond 'museum' which seemed more like an excuse to buy really expensive diamonds. We had a little history lesson on jewels in Hungry and then it was into a big showroom to see lots of jewellery. Needless to say, I don't think Peter and I fitted the bill to buy anything so we were ushered into the gift shop where there were more reasonably priced items. The generous person that Peter is, I came away with a lovely opal ring to remind me of our trip.

One thing that was very noticeable on our trip was the evidence of the recent communism. There were a lot of apartment blocks to house lots of people very cheaply. There were also lots of neglected fields. Hungry used to produce a lot of fruit and vegetables for Russia, they don't anymore so many of the fields have been left to the weeds. Quite a contrast to England where almost every bit of space is used for something.

In the evening we decided to go on a boat tour to see the lights of Budapest by night. I think I will leave the photos to speak about this one.

Monday

Our final day in this wonderful city was spent on foot, boy did we feel it! We went back to some of the sites that we had missed or wanted to see close up. Peter was keen to go to a bath house (left over from when the Turks ruled) so we found a bath house that catered for men and women and had a bit of a dip. It was a really interesting experience as we managed to find a bath house that not many tourists go to so all of the signs were in Hungarian and no one spoke any English. The clientele was about three times our age, so it was quite an experience and absolute bliss on our aching feet and legs. After our refreshing dip we headed to the Gellert Hotel to see where Mum and Dad had hung out while they were there. We did have tea and cake at the cafe which was yummy indeed!

We headed back to England that evening and finally got home to Oxford at about 1am! A fully action packed weekend that we are still recovering from.

This weekend we are heading down to the Wallingford Beer and Blues Festival, seeing Bic Runga in Oxford and going to Peter's big gig. Summer is on it's way here....