Our overnight train from Krakow to Budapest was quite a success. We were accompanied in our couchette car by some geeky English boys who eased my fears over traveling overnight in Eastern Europe.
If you didn't know the city is divided into two parts with Buda on one side of the Danube River and Pest (pronounced Pesht) on the other side. Our hostel, as well as most of the metropolition makeup of the city is on the Pest side and we were fortunate enough to have a day to devote to each side as well as another half-day to spend all our remaining fornits before we took a 7 hour train to Prague. But you wanted to hear about Budapest...
My first impression of the city was not really one of awe, but then again we wandered in from the area around the train station. The more and more that we got to explore I was able to really appreciate the true beauty of this city, which is still trying to accept its post-Communist ways.
After we checked into our hostel (the Budapest Bubble, a cute hangout type place) we spent most of Tuesday exploring the Pest side. The staff at the hostel was really helpful and pointed out everything on the map that we should see. We first headed to the main shopping street, Vaci, where we were finally able to find some mulled wine to enjoy. Yay! From there we walked to our next destination by way of following the Danube and seeing gorgeous views of the much more hilly Buda area.
Next up was a walk down Andrassy Avenue, which had been described to me as just like one of the main boulevards in Paris. The streets were nice and wide with many gorgeous buildings but I couldn't help noticing how many of the buildings seemed to be recently abandoned. We asked around why that was so and were told that there is a lot of confusion/discrepancy over who owns which building and whatnot...
We stopped at a cute cafe off of Andrassy Avenue for lunch. I had homemade iced tea and to-die-for carrot ginger soup! From there we headed to the House of Terror. No, its not an overpriced haunted house. The House of Terror is a museum dedicated to the decades of Nazi and Communist repression, and is housed in the former headquarters of the secret police of both the Nazi and Communist governments. The museum is fairly new and modern in the sense that there were lots of videos and well-designed interactive rooms. There were, however, some really disturbing videos. We also went into the actual prison cells from when the building was the headquarter. That was a really eerie experience.
We continued down Andrassy Avenue to what may have been one of the weirdest/most fun things that I've ever done-swimming in a thermal bath. I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, but so many people told us that we had to experience a thermal bath in Budapest. Basically, the inside part was many different rooms with various baths of different temperatures, along with steam rooms and saunas. Not having my bathing suit with me I really stood out as the weird American girl when I partook in the baths in a t-shirt and my underwear. Oh well, I'll never see those people again. That part was really nice and relaxing but the real awe for me came when we ventured outside. Huge hot tub pools with fountains, whirpools, jets, and lots of statues covered several football field-sized areas. We spent a long time just pinching ourselves because the experience was so surreal.
The front of the baths.
We decided to continue our Hungarian day but going to dinner to a place that my guidebook suggested. Geiro ended up being a small room in some gypsy family's house. It was quite the experience. A few men were sitting around playing music. One older man was extremely intoxicated and when Sarah went to take a movie of the ridicioulous scene he slapped her camera out of her hand! I was frightened from there on, but we stayed and actually really enjoyed our stuffed cabbage dinner. However, things got weird again when we noticed that the violion player seemed to have taken a liking to me and was basically solely playing music for me. He then asked if we'd buy him a drink (could we really say no at this point?) only to see that our bill later on was about double what we'd expect...
So that was Pest for the most part! Really interesting and a lot of fun! More on Buda later.
We stopped at a cute cafe off of Andrassy Avenue for lunch. I had homemade iced tea and to-die-for carrot ginger soup! From there we headed to the House of Terror. No, its not an overpriced haunted house. The House of Terror is a museum dedicated to the decades of Nazi and Communist repression, and is housed in the former headquarters of the secret police of both the Nazi and Communist governments. The museum is fairly new and modern in the sense that there were lots of videos and well-designed interactive rooms. There were, however, some really disturbing videos. We also went into the actual prison cells from when the building was the headquarter. That was a really eerie experience.
We continued down Andrassy Avenue to what may have been one of the weirdest/most fun things that I've ever done-swimming in a thermal bath. I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, but so many people told us that we had to experience a thermal bath in Budapest. Basically, the inside part was many different rooms with various baths of different temperatures, along with steam rooms and saunas. Not having my bathing suit with me I really stood out as the weird American girl when I partook in the baths in a t-shirt and my underwear. Oh well, I'll never see those people again. That part was really nice and relaxing but the real awe for me came when we ventured outside. Huge hot tub pools with fountains, whirpools, jets, and lots of statues covered several football field-sized areas. We spent a long time just pinching ourselves because the experience was so surreal.
The front of the baths.
We decided to continue our Hungarian day but going to dinner to a place that my guidebook suggested. Geiro ended up being a small room in some gypsy family's house. It was quite the experience. A few men were sitting around playing music. One older man was extremely intoxicated and when Sarah went to take a movie of the ridicioulous scene he slapped her camera out of her hand! I was frightened from there on, but we stayed and actually really enjoyed our stuffed cabbage dinner. However, things got weird again when we noticed that the violion player seemed to have taken a liking to me and was basically solely playing music for me. He then asked if we'd buy him a drink (could we really say no at this point?) only to see that our bill later on was about double what we'd expect...
So that was Pest for the most part! Really interesting and a lot of fun! More on Buda later.
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