Budapest

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Sunday, December 6, 2015

• Budapest, Family, Jelinkova, Roadtrip, Travel, Velke Mezirici

BW's parents just had one heckuva 40th anniversary celebration - they toasted four decades of marriage (well done!) on a Viking River Cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest.

The only way to travel, say BW's dad, who is now investigating boat trips in China and Russia. He just needs to retire from his job as a foreman electrician now so he can spare the time. Speaking of retirement, my newly work-free parents just spent a month volunteering in a national park/ghost town in Montana this Fall and are now headed to do the same in Kentucky as campground hosts.

Our parents are the coolest.

I can't wait for retirement.

Anyhow, after work a few Fridays ago, BW and I set off from Prague in a car we borrowed from our pal the Glaswegian, bound for Budapest to pick up his parents at the terminus of their cruise.

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DRIVE TO BUDAPEST ON A FRIDAY AFTERNOON. I repeat: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DRIVE TO BUDAPEST ON A FRIDAY AFTERNOON.

Traffic was jammed all the way out of Prague, and an accident meant us waiting still as statues for upwards of an hour on the highway. The 5-hour trip took about 7.5.

But Budapest was as brilliant as ever, especially so being gussied up in sparkly lights and Christmas stalls.

We hit some favorites in a the roughly day and a half we were there, including...

- Cheery Christmas Markets at Vörösmarty square

- Funky Erzsébetváros District with its kerts (ruin pubs) like Szimpla pictured below, Synagogue and alternative hand-made markets

- Ultra-grandiose New York Cafe, worth a $6 cup of coffee just to see the inside

- Sobering House of Terror Museum, the former headquarters for both Nazi and Communist parties in Budapest

- Walking the river for castle views (As Mom and Pop W visited the castle the day before we arrived, we didn't go up Buda Hill)

No dips in Turkish baths this time, but the quick city break was lovely, nonetheless.

And on the way back to Prague, we stopped at one of our favorite dining spots in the Czech Republic, the fresh fish restaurant at Hotel Jelinkova in Velké Meziříčí. My belly can't recommend this place highly enough.

The fish below would probably disagree with me, though.

Related posts on Budapest: Hairy start to Budapest (we should know better than to drive there by now), BudaBEST and Pest Peculiarities.

Another visit to Restaurant Jelinkova HERE.

Monday, May 12, 2014

• Budapest, Travel, Weird

There are healthy helpings of irreverence all over Budapest. Amid grandiose government structures and treasure-laden museums, you find things like a Michael Jackson memorial tree. And a cafe in the back of an old VW van. In our last Budapest post, we share a few quirky bits found 'round the city.

One thing we DIDN'T get a photo of was the multitude of people strewn on blankets all over public park space come sunset. One particular city square was packed tighter than a Brazilian beach during a heatwave. People would just sit for hours, in a big blanket-people quilt, elbow-to-elbow with strangers, eating picnic food, chatting and drinking wine straight from the bottle. It was weirdly wonderful.

If only we'd had more than a couple of days to uncover additional oddities...

We left our mark on a table in a kert.

A table for two in a VW. (The sister cafe is on the left.)

MJ forever.

Odd ad #1: A meat bikini

Odd ad #2: Does Kobe REALLY use Turkish Airlines all that much?

A purple boat in the middle of a beer garden

My favorite: A braille "sightseeing" vista along the riverside

Sunday, May 11, 2014

• Budapest, Travel

This morning we were soaking in a domed Turkish thermal bath, our molecules unraveling in the warm mineral water, feeling like Ottoman nobility. We did NOT want to leave. Even when we accidentally walked into a bath-side masseuse room where a completely bare old man was getting sprayed down with water.

2.5 days was not nearly enough to revel in the spoils of Budapest. Yes, it's small by international capital standards - 1.7 million - but it's a rich buffet of leisure and loveliness. Here were some of our favorites:

Buda Hill: Buda Castle was nice yet simple compared with other palaces we've seen. However, the area a few hundred meters north of it, with Fisherman's Bastion lookout and Matthias Church, was phenomenal. Below, on the Pest side of the Danube, the spiky Parliament building looked like the inside of a crystalline geode.

Fisherman's Bastion with a loooong drop behind him

Can you spot me?

Hungarians

The Hungarian Parliament building

Matthias Church on the right

Kerts. Squatters - and then budding entrepreneurs - established cafe/bars in old building ruins. Adults of all ages, kids and dogs abound, as do overgrown plants, junk art, car parts, graffiti and battered sticks of furniture. Our kinds of places.

Statues. Budapest is packed with them - more than any other European city that comes to mind. You think a strange man is staring at you from across the street, and then you realize it's some poet or revolutionary memorialized in bronze.

Chain Bridge

King Matthias hunting statue at the Royal Palace

Modern art

Another lion - guarding the innards of the palace

Architecture. Gothic, Neo-Renaissance, Ottoman, Baroque... Budapest has it all and more. Thanks to centuries of foreign occupations and wars, a kaleidoscope of architectural style is spread across the city. It is quite captivating.

More Parliament

Inside of St. Stephen's Basilica

Somewhere near the Jewish Quarter

Inside the national Opera House

(Sorry for the poor photos; they are the byproducts of phones thanks to a forgotten SD card)

Thursday, May 8, 2014

• Budapest, Roadtrip, Travel

We (BW, Frenchwoman and I) arrived in one piece to our home exchange in Budapest!

Reasons we should not have arrived in one piece to our home exchange in Budapest:

1) Car that our friend Frenchwoman rented had a big gash in tire and we had to wait for the agency to fix it, losing a half-day's travel time

2) J-dog was given a whole sausage by a well-meaning Czech waiter the night before our trip and had stomach issues on the drive we will refrain from writing about. Thankfully Frenchwoman's rental car stayed clean

3) We stood on the Hungarian border for what seemed like ages, waiting to purchase a required vignette (road permit)

4) The journey was heaped with road construction

5) We forgot things - BW's sunglasses, my camera's SD card (thank goodness for fancy phones)

6) GPS sent us driving in circles around a crowded city center, wanting us to go the wrong way down a one-way street to our destination

But we made it. And it's marvelous! And our eclectic home exchange flat is smack in the middle of the action and is floor-to-roof full of books, albeit in foreign languages. Frenchwoman dropped us and went to see friends she'd met while teaching in England, and we put our sightseeing goggles on.

A few sights from the first half-day:

- Central Market