 |
| St Stephen's Basilica |
This post is going to be a short one (I bet you're all relieved). When visiting Budapest back in March, we were only there for a day and I spent half of that day almost immobile and doubled over in pain so my memory of the city is a little bit hazy.
When we arrived, we were already greeted by beauty. The train station we came out of was, although deceptively run-down looking on the inside, a beautiful building from the outside and we were mesmerised when we turned around, not realising at first what was right behind us. We arrived in Budapest late in the afternoon and like we had done in the cities prior, we began our walk towards our hostel, the Retox.
The hostel we were staying at was a party hostel so we knew to expect conditions worse than what we were used to. It somehow exceeded my expectations on how bad it would be though... My first impression of the hostel was that it seemed like a cool place. It wasn't the cleanest but it had a good vibe.
I changed my mind as soon as we stepped into our room... The place smelled so bad and the beds were terrifyingly filthy. We made it a mission to spend as little time as possible in our rooms so we headed straight out for dinner.
It was already quite late when we arrived so dinner was on the agenda. After getting lost trying to find a place recommended to us by our hostel staff, we eventually found it only to realise that they didn't have enough room to seat us. Instead, we headed down the road where we found a restaurant near our hostel to have dinner, enjoying a traditional Hungarian meal (which I didn't manage to photograph because I forgot to bring my camera...). I ordered paprika chicken and noodles. I didn't know that paprika was such a big thing in Hungary! After dinner, we returned back to our hostel and spent the rest of the night enjoying drinks at the downstairs bar before resting up early.
 |
| Retox Hostel |
 |
| Retox Hostel |
 |
| Retox Hostel |
 |
| Retox Hostel |
The next morning, we awoke to our one and only day in Budapest and we were all determined to make the most out of it. Our first stop was St. Stephen's Basilica, the biggest monument in the city.
We were all impressed by the gold-covered interior of the Basilica and the intricate detailing of the building. The outside, however, was not particularly impressive compared to many other churches we had encountered in Europe. There is never a shortage of churches to visit in Europe...
 |
| St Stephen's Basilica |
 |
| St. Stephen's Basilica |
 |
| St. Stephen's Basilica |
 |
| St. Stephen's Basilica |
 |
| St. Stephen's Basilica |
Next up, we wandered towards the famous Chain Bridge to cross over from the Pest side of the city to the Buda side. The walk was a very scenic one, with views of the banks of each side of the city and of popular landmarks such as Parliament and Buda Castle. Once we had crossed, we headed towards Fisherman's Bastion, a panoramic viewing terrace situated on the Buda side of Budapest.
This is where my memory starts to go a bit hazy... My mild case of food poisoning hadn't occurred yet at this point but looking back, I start to forget what happened from here onwards of a while because the pain that I went through kind of blocked out a few of my memories...
 |
| View of Buda from the Chain Bridge |
After spending a bit of time on the Buda side of the city, we crossed back to Pest so that we could visit the Central Market Hall of Budapest. At the market, we tried a variety of Hungarian snacks, including apple strudel (which I really didn't fancy at all) and salami (the dreaded salami...). I was unlucky enough to be hit with sharp stomach pains after trying the salami and that had me out for almost the whole day. I don't really remember too much of our time at the market so this post is going to turn into a short photoblog at this point...
 |
| Central Market Hall |
 |
| Central Market Hall |
 |
| Central Market Hall |
 |
| Strudel |
 |
| Apple and poppyseed strudel |
 |
| The deadly salami... |
After leaving the market, I had the worst stomach pains. It felt like I was being stabbed repeatedly in my stomach and the pains were making hard to walk let alone continue sightseeing. I almost even had to get carried back to the hostel it was that bad!
We decided to head back to our hostel for a rest before heading to the beer bike that we had booked for the afternoon. I was hoping to recover in time for the beer bike and, with the help of some painkillers, I was lucky enough to be almost 100% by the time 4pm rolled around.
For the afternoon, we had a beer bike booked for the eight of us. This is where you sit on the vehicle photographed below and drink copious amounts of beer (60L between the 8 of us to be exact) while pedalling around on the main streets of Budapest, enjoying the sites of the city. Luckily, the bike comes with a driver so there's no worry of having to actually steer the thing! The beer bike screamed all sorts of illegal according to Australian standards. Not only were we drinking in public, we were (kind of) operating a vehicle, we weren't strapped in and we weren't wearing helmets. Gotta love Europe.
The beer bike was definitely the highlight of Budapest for me. The rest of the day was spent in pain but we had so much fun on the bike and even made a game out of cheersing our drinks every time we saw someone take a photo of us which, trust me, happened way more than often. As the beer bike went so slowly, we would constantly have a row of cars stuck behind us when driving on main roads and even had the police stuck behind us at one point!
 |
| Beer Bike |
 |
| Beer Bike |
 |
| Heroes' Square |
 |
| Beer Bike |
That evening, we trekked to the Jewish Quarter to see the Dohany Synagogue and had dinner at an amazing place called Hummus Bar. The fact that the restaurant's name has the word 'hummus' in it just speaks for itself.
We tried to have a night out that evening, visiting a bunch of different bars and clubs. Because it was a Wednesday night, we didn't manage to find a good place to stay in, even with the guidance of a couple of locals so we headed back early.
 |
| Dohany Synagogue |
 |
| Hummus Bar for dinner |
I only ever hear good things about Budapest, about how it's supposed to be beautiful and vibrant, but I was not thoroughly impressed by the city during my first visit here. It could have resulted from my not-so-great and unlucky experience with the food but even looking back at the city itself, it definitely did not compare to the likes of Prague. I'm glad that I did get the chance to return in July though as I definitely changed my opinion on Budapest. Stay tuned for my second Budapest post! It's gonna be a while but it'll be worth the wait!
0 comments:
Post a Comment