A Travel Blog (Or Something)

Day 4 / Budapest: the Castle District

We started our last full day in Budapest on the island I mentioned briefly in my last blog post, Margitsziget (Margaret’s Island), around which we circled a few times during our dinner cruise. We went without any clue as to what to expect, except its remarkable length and density of trees (which we noticed from the boat). The first thing we saw upon exiting Margaret’s Bridge (a neat structure that has an optional deviation halfway across the Danube to get to the island) was the “Musical Fountain”—a small-scale “World of Color” from Disneyland, where the fountain’s many jets shoot and swirl streams of water in time to music each night. We didn’t get to catch the music show, but even watching the fountain operate in the middle of the day was mesmerizing.

This was at the southernmost tip of the island, which is shaped like a football standing on one end. Along either side stretches a rubber-covered running track that had me drooling. (U.S., catch up!) The center of the island, on the other hand, was a lush forest with intermittent meadows that were being used as soccer fields, track rings, picnic spots, and play areas for kids on field trips. Every now and then, we’d pass a small cottage hotel or a pub, an art museum or a pool—but otherwise, it was just an island filled with nature and the people enjoying it.

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Day 3 / Budapest: Taking it easy

We started our third day in Budapest with the craziest bus ride I’d ever taken. Budapest’s public transit is pretty excellent, with a mix of subways, trolleys, lightrails, and buses (all of which arrive regularly and on time)—but this particular bus ride, grounded as it might have been to the electric lines overhead—was about to give us both a heart attack. We averaged somewhere around 60 MPH through winding city streets heading northeast, toward Pest’s Heroes’ Square and City Park, with plenty of brake-slamming and near-pedestrian-hitting. Ryan ended up giving his seat to an older woman who couldn’t keep up with the crazy turns, and she sat down next to me and gently crossed herself while staring straight ahead.

No more buses after that.

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Day 2 / Budapest: Hungary’s dark history

This was the first day of our honeymoon when Ryan and I mutually agreed that we were ready to wrap things up and head home. We were exhausted, our feet hurt, our backs hurt even worse, and getting out of bed in the morning was becoming increasingly difficult. This isn’t to say that we didn’t love every second of our remaining time in Budapest, but we were a little more…slow-going, to say the least.

That being said, I wasn’t the happiest camper when Ryan told me late the night before that we had 9 AM tour tickets to see the Parlamento, or the parliament building of Budapest. The tours are notoriously crowded during the rest of the day, hence the early hour—and once we arrived, I was glad Ryan insisted on it. This parliament building is among the most beautiful we’ve ever seen, both inside and out. The interior hallways, domes, and even doorways are so carefully decorated that every detail is noteworthy, but the combined effect is far from overwhelming. We saw the crown jewels, which Hungary handed over to the U.S. for safekeeping during Nazi and Soviet occupation (the U.S. returned the crown only a few decades ago, when all was safe again); we saw the congress chambers, where important governmental decisions are still made to this day; and we saw one of the grandest two-stairway entrances I’d ever seen, which only opens with the induction of new congress members every few years.

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Day 1 / Budapest: The Hungarian soul

We started our first full day in Budapest with an alternative to Rick Steves's written tours (he doesn't offer any audio walking tours...yet): Ryan found a group called My Personal Budapest, which offers various themed tours not unlike our tours in Florence. (In Florence, we went with a Médici-focused tour through the Uffizi and a more fantastical legends-based tour through the Accademia and surrounding old city.) The specific tour we chose was a 9 AM to 6 PM "Hungarian Soul" exploration through aspects of what makes Budapest unique in its history, culture, and expression. András, our tour guide, was born and raised in Budapest and now lives in Buda, the hilly side of the Danube. Just opposite its banks lies the much flatter Pest, less residential and more industrial in nature. In the late 1800s, six cities--including Buda, Pest, and Óbuda ("north of Buda," so you can probably guess where it's located)--joined forces to create a single metropolis, which would be more prosperous and more resilient against invaders. (Unfortunate side note: It didn't really help for the latter purpose. More about that soon.)

We met András in the Astoria district, where he walked us through gardens, plazas, and historic streets. Buildings considered "historic" were only deemed such because the structures that had stood there before might have been hundreds of years old, but given that Budapest has been on the losing side of every war for more than 500 years, much of the city is comparably new. The siege of Budapest--a fight between the occupying Nazis and incoming Soviets--was the second-longest siege of any city during WWII, and it had immeasurable destruction and casualties to show for it; so as is the case in Warsaw, most buildings really stem from no earlier than the 50s.

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