May 2

So, after a good night’s sleep we rose early to hit the town. I opened the curtains in my room and saw a view very similar to this…

(The old Palace, now a musuem on the Buda side of the River)

How cool is that. Not long after getting up we were on our way. We decided to have the buffet in the restaurant at the hotel. This meal was awesome. It had everything. EVERYTHING. I had so much bacon, sausage, ham, etc. it was ridiculous. We had a huge meal. We thought with the exchange rate that the meal did not seem to bad. (It is $1USD=160 Hungarian Forint) However, once we were eating, we realized that we were paying a hefty amount for this breakfast. That was another reason that we decided to eat as much as possible…so we could skip lunch. Before leaving the hotel we put down some cash for a 72 hour Budapest card. This gave us free and reduced admission to many sights, plus free transportation on all of the mass transit lines in the city (bus, metro, trams, etc).

So we were on our way. There is no one big attraction in many of the cities we visited, but just a large amount of them. So we had no one place to go so we started on a walking tour of Budapest. We walked up the river towards the palace (overlooking the river). We crossed to the Buda side (we were staying on the Pest side) and came to an incline like you would see in Pittsburgh. Instead of taking the easy way up, plus there was a large line, we decided to walk a path to the top of the hill. It was a great idea. We got spectacular views on the way up and it helped to start working off that ridiculous breakfast. Once we got to the top we had some absolutely awesome views. The palace at the top of the hill was turned into an art museum, which neither of us are really into. So we continued on walking through some various roadside stands towards Matthias Church. We were granted free access to this with our card, so we headed in. (It was great passing all the people in the ticket line) Wow. What an experience. I give all those Catholics a bunch of crap, but one thing is for certain, they can build some churches. The intricacy and design on the interior of this place is just unbelievable. Words cannot describe it at all. We headed out of the church which is right beside the Fisherman’s Bastion. This is part of the old castle wall that has stunning views of the river and into Pest. Our card did not cover going on top of it, so we did the next best thing and went to a restaurant under it. We were only about 10-15 feet from the top and we still had great views.

(Yours Truly with Parliment in the background)

Plus we were able to start partaking in some tasty beverages. After a quick drink and a stop at the water closet, we headed down to another church by the name of St. Annes. (I think…) It was closed buy we could look in the front door and it also looked very awesome. We walked down the river getting as many shots as we could and then headed for the Semmelweis Museum of Medical History.

(Carol and I taking advantage of the wall infront of us as a tripod. That is Parliment behind us)

The Medical museum was the birthplace of Ignac Semmelweis. It was a very interesting overview of the last 3000 years of European medical practice through documents, objects, and pictures/art.
After finishing up at the Medical museum, we walked towards Gellert Hill. On the way we stopped at a small restaurant with a nice big porch that overlooked a highway intersection. On the other side of the road was a large park that had a band playing. It was a great atmosphere. While planning the rest of our day I realized that we were eating at one of the recommended restaurants in the guidebook. This restaurant has apparently been around a long time and has a great reputation. (This happens a few other times during the trip.) We eat and then head on to continue our day. We walked to Gellert Hill which is named for a Martyr that was put in a barrel and thrown in the river many years ago for bringing Christianity to this region. The entire park and some baths are named after him. We switched back and forth up the hill towards the Citidel, which sits on the hill overlooking basically the whole city.

(View from Gellert Hill. The left is Buda, the Right Pest)

What spectacular views. The drinks were not too expensive, so we sat down and had a few tasty beverages. While sitting and talking, I thought that the deck seemed a little spongy…but didn’t think much of it. All of a sudden my chair bent in 2 and collapsed. I was lying flat on my back and laughing my ass off. It was hilarious. You could tell that many of the chairs have been outside way too long and were very brittle. The kicker was that they didn’t even offer me a discount, a beer, food or anything. Dang it.

We walked to the statue of liberty (theirs) and then started walking down the other side of the hill. It was great to be back in parks and nice areas where people were doing stuff. You don’t realize how much people do that until you live in the middle east and no one is ever doing anything anywhere. Here the Arabs smoke, drink tea, talk on their mobile phones, drive aggressive, pray, and go to the mall…not necessarily in that order. In our world, we walk dogs. Go to the park to hang out. Play Frisbee, walk downtown, sit at our door cafes. Read a book by the creek, etc. It is amazing the things you see they don’t have here when you get back to it yourself. We walked down the hill and went to the Rock Church.

(The Rock Church)

This is an actual church they have dug out of the rock. Don’t know how many it holds or anything, but it was still pretty impressive. You go in these gates and then down some steps into the church. There was a sign saying come back in 2 hours, that a service was going on (you know those nice short Catholic services) however, there was a video feed so we did get a little taste of the action.

It was getting late and we probably walked 5 -7 miles (at least) since breakfast. We headed back to the room to shower and put on some clean clothes (it got hot enough to sweat during the day) and then headed to a brewery/restaurant that was very close to the hotel. It was absolutely awesome. They had great beer, great food, plus we got to sit outside like this and eat and watch people. I love this aspect of Europe. I love this kind of atmosphere. I ordered .5 meter of Bratwurst, Sauerkraut, Red Cabbage, plus it came with a pretzel.

(Those awesome European Cafes)

We sat and enjoyed It all for a good while until it was time to call it a night. What an amazing first day in Budapest.