We emerged out in one of the main train stations of Pest called the Keleti station (which literally means “East Station.”) The interior reminds me a bit of Waterloo or Paddington stations back home in that it has a huge arched interior. There were noticeably a lot of tourists gathered in groups here too with large rucksacks a plenty. So I wasn’t alone!
We planned to use the excellent metro system to get around town but hit a stumbling block straight away as the line that we were planning to use a lot had construction work going on. *sigh* I guess that some things are just like back home!
I bought a Budapest Card, a tourist device which was probably not as good value as it could have been but did made a nice souvenir. It allows you free travel for two days and discounts or free entrance to a number of attractions around the city. I struggled to find a lot of these however. Sure enough it saved me a pound in one place and then gave me free entrance to another but more often than not it wasn’t really useful. Some places had signs with the Budapest card crossed out to make it obvious in any language that it wasn’t accepted.
My nephew made do with buying separate tickets for buses, metro and trams as we went along which, though a hassle, was definitely the better value for money option in our case.
As it was we ended up catching a shuttle-bus which was acting as a metro-replacement service. I got to know the locals up close and personal as it was packed! Another parallel with London.
I’d bought myself a pocket sized AA-guide to Budapest for under six pounds just before I came to Hungary on the off chance that I might get a chance to come to Budapest and it really worked out well. It was published this year, has a good top ten recommendation section, great summaries of all the sights to see around Buda and Pest (the Buda part of Budapest is on the Western bank of the Danube, Pest on the East) and great maps of the city along with a clear colour metro and bus route planner (looking very much similar to a London underground map.) So, excellent value for money for a day or two stay. Hmmm, just reading that bit back to myself, it sounds like I got paid to say that. Hehe.
We worked our way around the city pretty well. The day turned out to be near perfect with mostly blue skies throughout. The Budapest metro is quite cool. One of the lines had just small tiled platforms with short three carriage trains. Another line had long multi carriage trains that were a bit run down and looked like something out of old New York. Some of the stations are almost classically sculpted but we didn’t really have time to admire too much as we rushed around from place to place.
We managed to do Heroes Square first thing but this was already filling with tourists hopping off their tour buses, then onto the opera house (closed so early in the morning but interesting architecturally outside nonetheless.) A Spielberg movie was being filmed in the streets behind it. Needless to say, we couldn't get close.
Next, a walk down to the Basilica. A huge St Paul-like dome at its centre. The guide speaking to me in English (I was wearing a tee-shirt that I’d bought in Sydney) laughed when I spoke back to her in Hungarian and told her that I understood what she was saying but it was okay to speak in Hungarian too.
We climbed the steps to the top and got great views over the city. That’s when we discovered that there was a lift on the other side that we could have taken instead of puffing our way up the 330 odd steps! On reflection, I think that that was perhaps what the guide was trying to tell me earlier. Maybe she was laughing as we had taken the ‘more challenging’ route?
We also saw the, sacred to Hungarians, right hand of Saint Stephen which is kept in a sealed glass box and will be paraded around on his feast day. You pay 100 forints (30p) to have a light shine on it so you can take a picture!
After this onto the Parliament building over looking the Danube. It’s beautiful and looks a lot like the UK Parliament (but in a more picturesque setting.) It turned out that Red Bull were promoting their air race the next day and that planes were whizzing up and down the Danube trailing coloured smoke rehearsing for it. Unfortunately the queue for Parliament was truly gargantuan so we had to make do with pictures outside. I’d been the year before but was disappointed for my nephew who’d only been there when he was too young to appreciate it.
We were getting a bit Hungary (ooops, hungry) by now so we managed to hunt down a Pizza Hut (sad, eh?!) and stuffed our faces. The waiter couldn’t understand what I was saying in Hungarian though, which was a bit annoying, as everyone else so far had been fine. A Pepperoni pizza is called an Italian style salami pizza and there are a lot of Hungarian dishes in addition to the ones I’m familiar with at a London Pizza Hut but otherwise it was pretty much the same.
With full stomachs, we headed off to the Buda side of the city. The main bridge across (Lanchid – literally chain bridge, designed by the same guy who did London's Hammersmith bridge) was closed to pedestrian traffic as they were preparing the fireworks for the following day’s St Stephen festivities, so it was back onto another packed bus just to get across the bridge and then off on the other side.
We needed to walk off our lunch so climbed a lot of steps (argh!) to get up to the old Buda town that looks down over the Danube and Pest. There were loads of things to see here and I even managed to get my only free entry to a place (the Mattias church) with my Budapest card. To make up for all the walking that we were getting through we sat down outside a restaurant and had a nice ice cream. My nephew giggled as the waitress insisted in speaking to me in English with me answering back in Hungarian. It turns out that she was learning English so she said that she needed the practice. I said “me too but the other way around!”
All in all we managed to see pretty much all that we had set out to with just a few things missed to add, perhaps, to next year’s trip.
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