I didn’t realize that Ireland isn’t part of the Schengen area. Immigration lines were short so that wasn’t a big deal, but I am certainly cutting things close with my passport. One (giant, half-page sized) stamp to enter Ireland, one normal stamp to enter the Schengen in Bratislava, one normal stamp to leave the Schengen in Budapest, and then I’ll get at least one more giant entry when we land in Dublin again. That will leave me with one blank page, at most, and more likely only half a page. If an Ireland stamps on the way out, I’m not sure how it will all fit! I definitely need to get a new passport the minute I get home if I intend to make it to Uganda in a few weeks! And, of course, the US system for getting a new passport is so slow and cumbersome that I’ll be nervous until my new passport arrives.
Anyway, Thursday was a totally packed day in Budapest. We started with St. Stephen’s Cathedral which was less than a block down from our hotel. It was a really large cathedral, with all the ornate trimmings you’d expect. It also had some trimmings I wasn’t expecting, like a relic (the mummified right hand) of King St Stephen. While a perfectly lovely cathedral, there is certainly a bit of repetitiveness once you’ve seen several dozen cathedrals around the world.
After crossing the river, we peeked into the Church of St. Anne. Very baroque and not at all like St. Stephen’s Cathedral.
Then we started going uphill. So much uphill. Each time we turned a corner and saw a flight of stairs, we all had flashbacks to Cusco and the torture of those stairs. Thankfully, these are more contemporary, with relatively even steps and breaks in between…plus, they are not at 11,000 feet of elevation, so we could actually breathe the whole time we were climbing. At the top, we we rewarded with a somewhat confusing array of architectural marvels in front of us.
Fisherman’s Bastion and St. Matthias Church. The Fisherman’s Bastion is a protective wall built along the hillside – it is elaborate, and provides visitors (and defensive forces, historically) with multiple viewing angles to stand and look out over the city.
St. Matthias Church was stunning. From the exterior, with its elaborately tiled multi-colored roof, to the interior, with the colorful floors and columns. Standing in this church, you could feel what it would’ve been like to be here hundreds of years ago as royalty and nobles walked through. It was initially founded in 1015 – that is an incomprehensibly long time ago!
We spent a fair amount of time in that church. Visitors were allowed to go upstairs, so we could see the church from different angles. Seeing the church from above gave a very different perspective, making it feel smaller once the tremendous height of the vaulted ceilings was removed from the equation. At the same time, it also brought you closer to the ornate decoration, which made it feel grand but on a different scale. This was a surprisingly wonderful stop (Europe has a LOT of old churches, so it is easy to get jaded…as we did with St. Stephen Cathedral).
Thursday was much colder than the days before (we were also up in the Buda Hills, which exposed us to the wind). We headed over to Buda Castle with plans of walking around the massive compound, but we were cold and the whole site is under construction, so we did an abbreviated tour. Buda Castle is pretty, but again, it’s a castle in Europe. If you’ve been to one, you have a pretty solid sense of what you’ll see here.
One area that was accessible to tourists and that was indoors (doble win!) was St. Stephen’s Hall – some of the rooms of the Royal Palace. We meandered our way through, admiring the opulent decor.
The castle also includes a museum and several other areas of the castle. The museum was pretty good – not too big – and I learned a lot about a region of the world that I truthfully knew little about pre-WWII. Huns, Ottomans, various European powers…it seems like everybody was in Hungary at some point!
In the castle museum, we were able to learn about how water was collected and transported, walk through the cellars, and explore the King’s Chapel. It was all quite nice, and warmly indoors. 🙂
We stopped for a light lunch in the castle cafe and planned out the afternoon. I had planned to tour Parliament on Friday, but we thought maybe we do it Thursday given the fold (Parliament is indoors). Alas, that is when I learned that we needed advance tickets to see Parliament and that it was sold out for both Thursday and Friday (except in Spanish, but my Spanish isn’t that good!). They only allow visitors with guided tours, and since we typically don’t appreciate a guided tour, we agreed we were not devastated to miss it.
Instead, we agreed to head right to Rudas Baths. A long soak in a hot bath would do wonders for our chilled bodies. Budapest has a funicular that will take you up and down the hill (the one with he hundreds of stairs that we climbed). I thought maybe we’d take it down, but it was not cheap and it was quite small, so we just walked down the hill and stopped to get a photo of it. I love a good funicular, as everybody knows, but I just couldn’t spend $15/person for such a short distance.
Rudas Baths are interesting. One half is very contemporary, with a large swimming pool and 4 hot pools at various temperatures. The other half is a very old (1571/2) and dates back to when Budapest was under Ottoman rule. This older half feels very much like a Turkish bath, with the octagonal pool and the domed roof with multi-colored glass tiles.
Rudas Baths are not co-ed most of the week (they only require bathing suits on co-ed days, too). One of the more interesting aspects of Hungarian baths is how they approach the changing rooms. In the US, there would be a women’s and a men’s changing room, most likely on opposite sides of the facility. Here, there is a single large locker room used by all visitors, and then there are changing cabins throughout where you go to change. Cabins are single person so you have privacy, but the mixed locker room aspect of it is unusual to an American. It works, and it saves on space, but it just isn’t a model that we’ve adopted.
We went back to the hotel to hang up our wet swimsuits to dry and then went out for dinner. On the way back, we stopped for a peek at the New York Cafe – one of the most opulent cafes in the city. None of us were interested in waiting in line for an hour for dessert, so we walked in, took photos, looked around, then went back to the hotel to pack since we had a Friday flight.
Friday we meandered the city, shopping, stopping in cafes, and then eventually heading to the airport to fly to Dublin. Both Bratislava and Budapest were far better than I had expected them to be. Bratislava was relaxed, bright and open, and super clean. Budapest had a lot more historical charm than I expected, plus the modern urban vibe of a major metropolitan city. Both had good food, very friendly people, felt safe, and offered us a chance to learn a lot about the history and culture of a region we hadn’t much explored.
Vacation Days 