We are still getting used to the idea of slowing down our travel. We are used to doing 3-4 attractions in a day so we can say that we have “seen” a city in 2 or 3 days. We had 7 nights in Budapest so we changed that to 1-2 attractions in a day which gave us less of the whirlwind tourist attitude. M has been to Budapest before which helped us decide our priorities each day. We were able to take it easy, but on the 7th day we ran out of the “E ticket” attractions. I was going to rent a bike for the day and take a huge ride along the Danube, but I woke up with a slight fever and sore throat so we are just hanging out in the Airbnb for the day. By the way, we are staying right in the middle of town in the Jewish Section and the Airbnb only cost $50 a day. Lots of restaurants and bars within easy walking distance. Here is the view from our 6th floor mini-balcony.
The main attraction for us in Budapest is the Giant Thermal Baths. It is has been a little chilly this week but we were able to stand the 63 degree weather and cold winds to soak in the Sczechenyi Baths. There were huge pools outside but also a lot of smaller pools inside all at different temperatures. It was pretty cool and something you have to do in Budapest, but we didn’t stay too long because of the weather.
We went to a lot of awesome art museums in Vienna but we weren’t that excited about the Budapest Hungarian art, so we only went to one Matisse exhibit. We saw the painting that M had as a poster in her dorm room when I met her many years ago. By the way, we also celebrated our 30th anniversary this week by going to a good Spanish Tapas restaurant. We talked about how we always like to be traveling together on our anniversary and next year we aim to be in Spain for our 31st.
Budapest has a couple good churches but we weren’t really interested in paying to get in yet another cathedral. We have seen so many in our lives and will see many more on this trip. But we did find a church that was built in a cave, which was a little more interesting…
We also saw the Budapest Central market. We have also been to a lot of market places all over the world so we didn’t stay long. It is cool to see the “specialties” of the city and then spend the week trying to taste as many as we can. We saw Unicum which is the famous bitter herb liqueur from Hungary. We ended later in the week going on a tour of the Zwack distillery where Unicum is made. It was pretty interesting but I am still not sure if I really like the taste of Unicum…
We spent Monday taking a train 45 minutes to a small cute tourist town Sventendre. It was rather deserted because of the chilly weather, it is now off season and it is a Monday. But we did see a small wine museum and a had a decent lunch. We also toured a Marzipan museum which I talked about in the last blog post. https://howbillrolls.com/?p=1004. It was nice to get out of the hustle and bustle of a big city for a change…
We did like some of the hustle and bustle. Budapest is famous for ruins bars. We had some drinks at one of the outdoor food truck type areas in empty lots, but we also made it to the most popular ruins bar- the Szimpla Kert. It is very popular and fills up every night. Several rooms around 2 floors that had been bombed during WWII. Lots of tourists but also a lot of locals. One of the coolest places we have ever been. We ended up also having breakfast here at their Sunday market.
One day, we climbed up the hill on the other side of the river to see the Buda Castle. Lots of buildings and museums up here but most of them aren’t really that old. They were hit pretty good by Allied bombers in the war and they are still getting rebuilt. We didn’t pay to go into any of the museums except for the Underground Hospital. I talked in the last post about how it was filled with wax figures to help visitors get an idea of what it was like. I thought it was interesting but also a little weird seeing bleeding wax figures.
We really enjoyed Budapest, it was a little grittier and cheaper than fancy Vienna but also a little bit more fun. Next Stop- Zagreb Croatia.