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.

I was thinking Prague, circa 2002. Communist block housing, hustlers trying to sell you a hotel room/food/merchandise of questionable origin, a complete lack of vegetables or food that I can eat…

Bratislava is definitely the cleanest city I’ve ever been to. It’s got a stunning architectural mix of Art Nouveau, Gothic, Renaissance, plus the Socialist realism and Communist brutalism that you’d expect. I’ve had exactly zero people try to sell me things, pickpocket me, or scam me in any way. Walking around at night feels easy and safe.

We started the day with a 10:30 tour of 20th Century Bratislava. Having lived through the fall of the U.S.S.R. and the Iron Curtain, Luke and I were particularly interested in this part of the area’s history.

We learned about the city’s Jewish history. Of the 85,000 Jews in Slovakia, fewer than 10,000 survived WWII, and fewer than 500 stayed in Slovakia when it transitioned to Communist Czechoslovakia. The city has only 1 remaining synagogue to serve the remaining population.

Throughout the past 70 years, Slovakian architecture also featured public art as part of a law requiring 2 pieces of art with every building development.

Slovakia recently elected a female president, something I’m not confident I’ll see in the US in my lifetime. She’s opted not to live in the Presidential Palace, although she still goes there to work. We watched the changing of the guard and all agreed that having to stand completely still for an hour would be miserable.

We wrapped up the tour at the memorial commemorating the Velvet Revolution, where our guide outlined the breakup of Czechoslovakia (a velvet divorce, as he called it).

As we set out on our own, we set our sights on the Blue Church. It seems all of Bratislava has weird hours and all of those weird hours exclude Mondays, so we couldn’t go inside, but it was super cool on the outside. This looks nothing like any cathedral I’ve ever seen. It’s a sort of mix of big cathedral, soft Art Nouveau curves, and pastel coloring of nothing I’ve never seen in a cathedral before.

Lunch was at a place that was originally built to house a monastery and public hospital in the 16th century, but is now a brewery and restaurant. Food was traditional Slovakian, which apparently means absolutely no green veggies of any kind, but plenty of potatoes, cheese, and meat. Thankfully, they seem to be totally OK with vegetarians as long as cheese and potato are ok. That’s ok with me!

We meandered our way up to Bratislava Castle. This has a strong Bavarian castle feel, with the symmetrical walls and turrets on the corners. It’s on top of a hill (of course), so we had quite the workout getting up there!

Since the castle wasn’t open, we explored the exterior and then left to see two more sights. First up was St. Martin’s Cathedral. This was a quaint cathedral by most standards, and I appreciated the modest scale as compared to a cathedral in Spain, France, or Italy.

Last event for the day was the observation tower on the UFO bridge. On a really clear day, you can see Hungary and Austria from up here. It wasn’t quite that clear, but the views were still fabulous.

We leaned hard into the tourist angle and had a drink in the rooftop bar while the sun set over the city.

Anybody who knows me knows that I never leave a bar or restaurant without using the bathroom. These facilities were hilarious! They are all glass with some strategically placed frosting. While I’m confident the street is too far away for anybody to see anything, the glass certainly makes you think about how you pull your pants up. 🙂

Dinner was at a little pub near the hotel. They had soccer on the projection TV, but then switched to hockey. I’ve never traveled someplace that appreciated hockey (other than Canada and the US), so it hadn’t crossed my mind that the Czech and Slovakian Republics would watch NHL hockey. In hindsight, of course they would like hockey – a huge percent of NHL players come from this region. Some hockey, Pilsner Urquell on tap, some excellent fries, and the best companions wrapped up a great day!

Tomorrow we are off to Budapest. I think one day here was OK, but a 2nd day wouldn’t be a bad thing (3 seems excessive – the city is small). I was expecting a grey, boxy, somewhat soul-less city, but I was so incredibly wrong! This was one of the most surprising cities I’ve ever been to. It surpassed my expectations in every possible manner. Budapest, you have BIG shoes to fill!