Budapest—The Boat, The Circus, And The Last Meal.

I have been waiting…and waiting…and waiting…and not nagging. Therefore, I will have to be the one who has to write about the last part of our trip. Dr. W is just too busy studying for his GRE test in the evenings and exercising during lunchtime to get ready for the crazy, incredibly wild thing ever for him—Tough Mudder (coming to Winchester on June 8th). I cannot wait to see pictures from that day-hehe.

Okie-dokie. Budapest. Friday. Fabulous weather. Last full day of exploring. The kids were a bit tired of being dragged around to see “beautiful buildings”, so I wanted to surprise them and go to an fun and educational place (according to my friend Tripadvisor), Palace of Wonder.

Robert was in charge of getting us there, meaning he had to look up all the addresses, trams and metro routes. He even showed me the map and said,  “EASY!”.  So after quite a lazy morning and a bit late breakfast, we finally left at 10 am. We walked to our usual tram station (smelling all the wonderful pastries on the way), got on the tram….and….after looking at a map of the stations on the route, realized we were going in the wrong direction, over a completely different bridge than we saw on the map and that getting to the right spot to catch the right tram would take ages. Dun-Dun-Dun. I do not believe I sad “I told you so”. Or at least I remember that we were just a little sad for a minute or two. Quick discussion again about what to do, and we decided to just stick around the area and have a relaxing morning.

This is a picture I took after we got off that “wrong tram”. Beautiful Danube.

We were already next to the river, in fact, we were near Margaret Island, a green area/park right in the middle of the city. We remembered that we could take a Water Bus down the river with our transportation card. So we found A water bus stop and waited.

And waited…(about 30 minutes)…and waited…until one sweet lady came up to us, looked at the schedule sign and said that she thinks that particular stop was only used on Saturdays…

Instead of giving up, we crossed the bridge and found another stop for the city water bus. We had to wait for 25 minutes for the next one to come. So we did. I left Robert and the kids for a few minutes trying to find some sort of snacks for the kids, as we were approaching lunchtime, but did not succeed. I did manage to break  my shoe though, so coming back from my “hunting” journey was not a pretty sight.

Finally, at noon, we saw the right boat! I felt like we were survivors of some shipwreck standing on a deserted island, waving our arms and yelling “Here!!!”.  Do not worry, we did not look like that (the kids probably did).

We only needed to go two stops on the water bus. A twenty minute ride! We laughed. After all we waited for over an hour to get on this boat just to get off it in twenty minutes. I mean, we could have kept going round and round and round, but we did not want to venture too far out from the city center. Besides, a certain member of our family gets queasy on boats.

The wind was picking up.

The clouds were coming in. Nothing like the first picture on this blog—no sunny skies any more.

Seeing the Parliament Building from the river was spectacular.

The boys stayed out on the deck the whole time, while I was freezing after the first ten minutes.

“Mark, do you like the boat ride?”

“Nah….”.

Oh yes, of course, he did!

After getting off the boat, we walked through a beautiful part of the city. Katya taking pictures.

 I cannot remember where we ate our lunch (that’s why I have to write down everything as soon as we can!).

Our final destination for the day was the Circus! The Budapest Circus is located back in City Park, close to Hero’s Square. It is a permanent kind of circus (or for people from Ukraine—a normal kind of circus). This was the first time our kids had seen a circus that was not in a tent. The ones that they have been to in the states and in the UK have always been travelling kind.

Before the show.

It looks like we are the only spectators. Well, we were a little early, but most of the good seats were taken, actually.

If you are against animals in circuses, you would not like this show, as it did have real elephants and tigers and a few other creatures. Robert said that was his favorite part. I was just laughing to myself half of the show because although the circus is supposedly from Italy, the majority of people who were doing any sort of acrobatic tricks were Asian. I did not have an idea that so many Asians live in Italy. They were really talented and fantastic at what they did. The kids loved all the people flying up by the ceiling.

The circus itself reminded me of the circus I used to visit when I was a kid. I did wish they had monkeys…

After two hours of circus, we headed towards our apartment, and found a fabulous Italian restaurant on the way. It was starting to rain, so walking was not as pleasant as it was earlier in the day. Nevertheless, we still managed to get home without any kids whining. Stopping for 50 cent ice-cream helped as well.

The next morning, Saturday, we checked out of our apartment at 10 am, grabbed our suitcases and started walking to the restaurant-buffet that I was hoping to try as our last meal in Budapest. On the map, the distance seemed like maybe a 10-15 min walk. And it was only about 20 minutes, but adding kids and suitcases, it turned out to be more like half an hour. We made it to the restaurant right on time to be its first lunch customers.

I cannot recommend this restaurant enough if you want to stuff yourself to the point of not ever wanting to eat again. I think our goal was to eat so much that we wouldn’t want to buy any snacks for our flight home-hahaha. We succeeded. I ate such a variety of foods that I was not hungry for dinner when we came back to England. They had salads and cold cuts, and soups, and meat and more veggies, and pasta, and at least ten different kinds of desserts. The best part was that kids ate free, on Saturdays only.

The name of this restaurant-buffet is Trofea Grill, and I believe they have several locations in Budapest.

We had our taxi driver pick us up from the restaurant. The kids were covered with face paint….but not on their faces. A lady at the restaurant was painting kids’ faces, but I told our kids that they could only get something drawn on their arms since I was not sure the customs officer would like seeing my children’s faces covered in green, red or purple.

Our flight was around 3 pm. And although we ended up being towards the end of the line to board the plane, we still had no trouble finding a place for our whole family to sit together. So far, Ryanair has been worth every penny.

So….do I recommend Budapest—yes! Great food, beautiful city, yummy pastries and great prices! Not Paris by any means, but definitely worth a visit.

Budapest-Buda, Here We Come!

We lucked out. The day we arrived to Budapest, the weather turned really warm and sunny.  The day we “conquered” Buda was no exception. This is the day (Thursday) when we were planning to take our Free Walking Tour.

On the way to the meeting point, we stopped at St. Stephen’s Basilica. It is a majestic building, dedicated, of course, to the guy who turned Hungarians to Christianity. As we walked inside the building, I tried to find out how much it was to get in, but the lady at the entrance, just waved us in, telling us to go in without paying. So we walked in, trying to find THE HAND! What hand you might wonder?

This is me…looking for THE HAND. And this is my last illegal picture of the day. I’ll explain in a minute.

Some of the pictures of the inside.

So after looking around, we come to this point where it says “Tourist Stop”, at the same time, some other signs point to go in there to see THE HAND.

I exchange a few words with another American/Canadian couple about why it wouldn’t be open and walk away. Just a minute or two later, as I pass this place again, one of the workers starts taking down the ropes and waves at me and the kids to go inside. I barely had time to look for Robert before we were swallowed into the “cabinet of THE HAND”.

And here is what THE HAND looks like.

What? You think you cannot see clearly where the hand is? What are you talking about, it’s lit up for you? I dropped 50 cents or so into a special automated machine right next to this treasure that allowed me to have the case be lit up for two minutes! And I could snap this picture.

Okay, here is the explanation.

The funny part is that it says here “It was carried away to the west”. Hehehe. It was actually somehow taken to the US, to Tennessee, I believe….Or maybe it is just a legend….

The hand looks like an old mummy’s hand (not like an old mommy’s hand).

This is the exterior for you.

So, after we were walking outside the building and while Katya and Robert were trying to take a few more pictures, I noticed a couple of Russian tour groups gathered in front of the entrance. I overheard their tour guide tell the group “It is okay to take pictures of the inside of the Basilica, but you are not allowed to take pictures of yourselves or other people  inside the building”.  Oops. I did not see any signs prohibiting taking pictures of people, therefore I will just assume the rule applies only to Russians.

It was time for us to meet up with our Free Walking Tour guide. This was our second time taking a free walking tour in Europe and we were not disappointed. Obviously, the tours are not free but you pay at the end as much as you think the tour was worth to you.

Our group consisted of maybe ten people in all, so it was perfect.

At first we walked over to the most famous bridge in Budapest—the Chain Bridge.

At the time of its construction, the Chain Bridge was the suspension bridge with the second-largest span in the world. It connects Buda and Pest, and here is Katya on the bridge with the view of Buda behind her.

Once we crossed the bridge, we had a choice of going up the hill via this funicular or walk a  windy road up the hill. Although the funicular looked fun, it was just too short for the price we’d have had to pay. So the whole group opted to walk instead.

In the middle of our walk up the hill, we took a long break while our guide told us an abbreviated version of  history of Budapest and a whole bunch of interested information. Robert and Alex were listening intently.

Mark was walking around playing with grass and sticks.

And Katya was “listening” and taking pictures of everyone around her and then herself.

When we got to the top of Buda Hill, a beautiful view of the opposite side of Danube emerged. St. Stephen’s Basilica with THE HAND inside is that tallest building you see.

The Parliament.

And at this point, our memory card in our fancy camera died, or at least went into coma. We could not get any more pictures taken with it and I was worried the pictures from the first two days of our trip were gone forever. But no, after returned home, we were able to recover all of them with the help of $40 and some downloaded software Robert found online. So all those pictures you saw in the last two posts are way more expensive than your regular every day shot, I must say.

We got to the president’s house just in time to watch a short change of guard ceremony. The kids loved that.

We saw St. Matthias Church (cannot explain why we have no evidence of that) and then Fisherman’s Bastion with St. Stephen’s monument.

Here is another view of Fisherman’s Bastion. It is not that old—built in 1906, mostly to give people another opportunity to see Budapest from up high. Nowadays it is a popular tourist spot and nothing more.

It was about 2 pm when we finished our tour and were on our way to the next destination high in Buda Hills. We wanted to ride on a Children’s Railway train.

To get to the train station, we first had to take a tram from Castle Hill part to the cogwheel train station.

I cannot believe these sort of trains still exist in a city like Budapest.

In fact, it was quite functional, as many people got on and off at various stops as we were climbing through the hills full of residential houses.

After about twenty minutes we got off the cogwheel train and walked five more minutes to the Children’s Railway station. The reason why it is called “Children’s” is because it is operated entirely by children (except an adult drives the train). So kids are the ones who sell and check your tickets and explain when and where to get on the train.

Ready to depart.

Checking tickets.

We passed through several train stops and at almost each one we were saluted by the kids working at the railway. They resemble the “pioneers” of the USSR, even in the way they salute. (Katya, watch and learn, see how obedient those kids are?). 

It was a very calm hour or so when we were riding the train, almost like a dip in the past since you could not see any cars or houses on the way. It was all woods and hills—it was hard to believe we were riding through Budapest.

Glad we did something for the kids—kept them occupied and we all rested our tired feet.

Not sure how in the world we found our way back to Pest part and even found the restaurant I was recommended to eat at (by Tripadvisor).Rosenstein is one of the best places to eat in Budapest! We loved their goulash. And the kids loved there pasta with meat (although you cannot tell from Mark’s facial expression, he is actually really enjoying his meal-haha).

Oh, Hungarian food is soo good! I could write another post about just food in Budapest. If in Barcelona we had a hard time finding food that we liked, here, on the opposite, we had too many choices with fantastic meals.

We walked home for almost an hour, but the kids did great (we had to walk off all that filling food).  Granted, Mark was riding in a stroller, so at least he was not whining. Robert said next time we should wrap up his leg in a bandage or something, so that people would not be thinking why such a big boy is still using the stroller (for his parents’ sanity sake! That’s why!).

We got some dessert at a pastry café near our house, and finally made it home around 9 pm.

Hope you are still following me, as we have one more day to tell you about. Maybe I can convince Robert to write about it…but then he is busy studying for his GRE test (but that is another story).

Cheers!

Budapest-Private Tour Day

All right, I am partially done with laundry, so it’s time for another blog post.

We wanted to maximize our time in Budapest, so we did something we had never done before—we hired a tour guide to show us around the city. I found Zoltan through Tripadvisor. After some negotiations, we arranged a very good price and decided to meet at 10 on our first full day in Budapest. Through email, I explained to him that I wanted to walk through the area that would not be covered in our Free Walking Tour (we’ll get to that later) on another day. So we decided to stick to Pest side of the Danube again. He asked me a few questions about who we were and why we were coming to Budapest. He asked me if I were Jewish, since many Americans come to Budapest to track down their Jewish roots. He probably also thought we were crazy for taking three youngish kids to Budapest to do sightseeing, but oh well-haha.

We began our tour by taking the metro to the Szechenyi Baths area. I did not know know until I was researching Budapest’s sightseeing that Budapest is a city of spas since it’s situated on many hot springs.  Originally, I was going to take the whole family to this spa—but after reading a number or reviews that described the baths and the towel rental policy, plus the increase in the ticket cost that occurred a couple of months ago, I decided against it. And we do not regret skipping it.  The building itself is very pretty and not quite what you expect a spa to look like. Very fancy.

Our guide suggested instead we stop by this small building nearby—it is a place where people come to buy mineral water, fresh from underground. You can buy it hot or cold, only a cup or several gallons. Our guide bought a cup for us to try.

Mark, Alex, Robert and I tried it.  It was nasty! It reminded me of all my trips to the Crimea where we would drink mineral water like this multiple times a day and get covered with gross smelling medical mud at least once a day-haha.

Next, we walked through the City Park to Vajdahunyad Castle. It’s quite and interesting place because although one part of it was modeled after Hunyad Castle in Transylvania (Drakula’s place) and is built in Gothic style,

the other side is  in Romanesque style

and one more part is a Baroque building, currently a Museum of Agriculture.

The Castle was built in 1896, just like many other famous buildings and places in the city, because that’s when Hungary was celebrating its anniversary of “being found”.

The City Park is famous for its Anonymys statue, sculpted in 1903. It’s not actually anonymous since we do know that this is  a statue of mysterious monk who lived in the 12th century and served as the notary of King Béla III. He is credited as the writer of the first book of the history of the Hungarians. Our guide told us that touching monk’s pen brings good luck in writing and studies-that is why the pen is still sparkling golden color while the rest of the monk is completely green.

The statue of the Anonymous Four Year Old.

Really close to the City Park you can find Heroes’ Square—a really pretty place with many monuments to former leaders of Hungary. This is the exact place where my mom posed for her pictures twenty five years ago.

Moving on. Exploring Pest side of the city, we walked past this famous Alexandra book store. The interior is just beautiful!

The ceiling was amazing. Wish we had time to get a snack there, but we had to keep going.

We stopped at the Budapest Opera Theater, a beautiful building, built during the late 1800s. We stepped inside as well and enjoyed the interior of the vestibule. I have to admit that my Lviv Opera Theater seems a bit more grandiose that this one (but I am biased).

From the theater, we walked to the Jewish Quarter, the area in Budapest where many Jewish people used to live. Now, a lot of houses are occupied by the gypsies. Our tour guide took us to a very non-touristy spot in the middle of that neighborhood—a real Synagogue. We were able to go inside and look around. None of us had ever been to one, so it was very interesting to see the inside.  It was nothing like the churches that we are used to.

 

Zoslan also showed us one of the houses given to the gypsies. The apartments looked very untaken care of, almost abandoned. It looked very much like some areas in Ukraine where very poor people get settled in old beautiful buildings but then cannot keep up with the repairs and cleaning. 

Finally we arrived to the place that kids really wanted to visit! This is a real Jewish bakery café. We had some yummy yummy cake…I had a real layered pastry made with apples, nuts and poppy seeds.

This is Zoslan and Alex. Zoslan looks quite Hungarian:).

After our dessert stop, we went to the Great Synagogue, just a couple of blocks away.  This synagogue is the largest synagogue in Europe. It has 2,964 seats. It was heavily damaged during the wars, but restored in the 1990s.

This beautiful Tree of Life is located right next to the synagogue.

Each leaf has a name of  a Jewish person who was killed by the Nazi.

In 1944, the area where the Great Synagogue is located was part of the Jewish Ghetto. Over two thousand of those who died in the ghetto in the winter 1944-45 are buried in the courtyard of the synagogue.

 

Plaques with the names of people buried here are displayed on the walls.

I never understood why so many Jews in Ukraine had German last names. I learned that they were all forced by Austro-Hungarian Emperor Joseph to change their Yiddish names to German ones. I read even more about how Jewish got their last names here.

As you notice, there are no flowers around the memorial stone. It is because it’s believed that flowers will wilt and die but rocks will not--showing reverence for the departed forever.

The kids did surprisingly well walking around such a solemn place.

Our last stop with the guide was the Central Market. 

Honestly speaking, I was a bit disappointed in the market. I did not find anything special or fun about it. Yeah, it was good to find fresh produce and some pastries, but the souvenir section was crowded and overpriced.

The meal on the second floor of the market left a “sour feeling” in our mouths as it was the most expensive meal we had in Budapest, and probably the worst tasting one.

We said good bye to Zoslan, hopped on the tram that went along the Danube. We found the place where we needed to get off and cross a very busy street to get to the next place we wanted to see—shoes by the Danube.

I think this was one of the most memorable places for me in the whole city. Something so unique and poignant telling the story of how so many Jews were executed right there by the river. Something that definitely left the impression in my mind and in our (big) kids’ minds.

These shoes-statues lined the Danube bank for about 300 m across the Parliament Building.

And here is the Parliament. This building always shows up in most guide books and websites for Budapest. It is indeed a beautiful sight. You can choose to take a 45 min tour inside if you want, but at this point, our family preferred to stay outside—it was not rainy, kids loved walking by the river…and who wants to listen about “another boring building”, right? haha

It was so light outside, that we sort of lost track of time! And we had a dinner appointment on the other side of Budapest! Robert apparently had his watch still on London time or something. Anyway, since we have become quite savvy with Hungarian trams by then, we took a couple of them all the way to Buda side to visit the Fergusons. 

Rachel (formerly Wilson) is our great friend, who was my host sister when I first came to the US as a foreign exchange student. So basically, she has known me longer than Robert and we lived in the same house for almost a year. She is currently living in Budapest with her husband and three kids due to her husband’s job. It was great to see them and have dinner at their house.

We were exhausted after so much walking, so we were so happy to finally make our way back to our apartment. By 10 pm (!) everyone was finally asleep. Kids love the fact they get to stay up that late when we travel.

I’ve got more to tell you about the rest of our trip, so come back soon.