Budapest, Day 1
The overnight train to budapest was SOooooo nice! just 3 bunks in the room with our own private sink and choc croissants and bottled water....and even our own toiletry kit! 
Unfortunately, we were woken up 2x for border control. Once to get entry & exit stamps for slovakia (they came w/i 5 mins of each other) and another about an hour later for the hungarian entry stamp.
We wondered...does the quality of the train depend on where it came from?
Hotel Panzio was easy to find, right outside metro station. Room not ready (of course), so we had breakfast, regrouped and ended up chilling at the cafe till we could checkin. Nice room! high ceilings, humungous..very new looking, good view and free breakfast. yay!
After settling in, we headed over to Buda Hill to see the castle (destroyed & rebuilt many times) and Mattias church (why the tiled roofs??). The mythical Turel bird dropped a sword on the hill to show the Magyar ppl were to settle. All in all, Buda had a very quaint, small town feel that was really appealing.
We headed to the metro to get back to Pest and saw a guy outside playing music on jars (filled with water). It was so neat & he was pretty good. I took a movie. Oh...and some of the metro escalators are long, steep & go pretty darned fast so
it kinda feels like a wind tunnel sometimes. You can definitely feel the force of the wind pushing you back. We saw an old guy tumble from midway up all the way down!! It was quite frightening but many ppl rushed over to help him and he got right back up and continued on his way (albeit, really really slowly). So he seemed fine, but it made me extra careful when riding any of the escalators.
Another thing about the metro was that there were quite a few cops checking for validate tickets and it was pretty obvious they were mainly targeting tourists. The metro system's so confusing with all these timed & limited transfer tickets, validation and what-not, i can see how ppl would get confused. Thankfully, we saved ourselves all that trouble by getting a multi-day pass to all public transportation. which ended up being SOooooo worthwhile! yay!
We were always confused exiting the metros and
had to take some time to re-orient ourselves and figure out which exit to take, etc. And the streets are all crooked and stuff so it only added to our confusion. This is what happened on our way to the Main Market Hall and I'm actually still not quite sure how we got there! But thankfully we made it there just before it closed, saw the super expensive merchandise (major disappointment), grabbed some pastry snacks and continued on our way. We strolled down Vaci Utca (the high-class pedestrian shopping street) all the way back to our hotel where we all took a nap.
Finally around 9pm, R & i reluctantly got up and decided we really should head out for dinner. C decided to pass on dinner. So R & i headed out to Menza (recommended by RS). The restaurant was in a totally yuppie area. We went in and felt like we coulda been at any restaurant in SF. We stuffed ourselves silly and talked and talked and talked...all the way till 11:30pm!!! Wow. time flew by. So we walk out to the metro stn only to discover that the gates were down!!!!!! as it turns out the metros close at 11:10pm. And since RS doesn't recommend hailing any taxi's in budapest (besides which, we were 2 vulnerable girls)...we decided to walk back to our hotel. only 4 metro stops away. how hard could it be? It was soooo creepy tho cuz everything was closed, the streets were virtually empty except for the occassional group of ppl walking past and every so often we'd have to stop to look at the map. Once we had to walk in an underground walkway to cross the street and the only other ppl in there were sleeping!!!! i really flew thru there. we got a little lost (some of the streets are SOOooo confusing. they really don't believe in 90 degree intersections...) but somehow found our way to vaci utca which had lots of pedestrians and made our way back to the hotel around midnight.
Oh. and i learned a new word today too. Funicular. the tram/train thing that goes up steeps hills/mountains.
Total walking distance: 5.39 miles
Unfortunately, we were woken up 2x for border control. Once to get entry & exit stamps for slovakia (they came w/i 5 mins of each other) and another about an hour later for the hungarian entry stamp.We wondered...does the quality of the train depend on where it came from?
Hotel Panzio was easy to find, right outside metro station. Room not ready (of course), so we had breakfast, regrouped and ended up chilling at the cafe till we could checkin. Nice room! high ceilings, humungous..very new looking, good view and free breakfast. yay!
After settling in, we headed over to Buda Hill to see the castle (destroyed & rebuilt many times) and Mattias church (why the tiled roofs??). The mythical Turel bird dropped a sword on the hill to show the Magyar ppl were to settle. All in all, Buda had a very quaint, small town feel that was really appealing.We headed to the metro to get back to Pest and saw a guy outside playing music on jars (filled with water). It was so neat & he was pretty good. I took a movie. Oh...and some of the metro escalators are long, steep & go pretty darned fast so
it kinda feels like a wind tunnel sometimes. You can definitely feel the force of the wind pushing you back. We saw an old guy tumble from midway up all the way down!! It was quite frightening but many ppl rushed over to help him and he got right back up and continued on his way (albeit, really really slowly). So he seemed fine, but it made me extra careful when riding any of the escalators.Another thing about the metro was that there were quite a few cops checking for validate tickets and it was pretty obvious they were mainly targeting tourists. The metro system's so confusing with all these timed & limited transfer tickets, validation and what-not, i can see how ppl would get confused. Thankfully, we saved ourselves all that trouble by getting a multi-day pass to all public transportation. which ended up being SOooooo worthwhile! yay!
We were always confused exiting the metros and
had to take some time to re-orient ourselves and figure out which exit to take, etc. And the streets are all crooked and stuff so it only added to our confusion. This is what happened on our way to the Main Market Hall and I'm actually still not quite sure how we got there! But thankfully we made it there just before it closed, saw the super expensive merchandise (major disappointment), grabbed some pastry snacks and continued on our way. We strolled down Vaci Utca (the high-class pedestrian shopping street) all the way back to our hotel where we all took a nap.Finally around 9pm, R & i reluctantly got up and decided we really should head out for dinner. C decided to pass on dinner. So R & i headed out to Menza (recommended by RS). The restaurant was in a totally yuppie area. We went in and felt like we coulda been at any restaurant in SF. We stuffed ourselves silly and talked and talked and talked...all the way till 11:30pm!!! Wow. time flew by. So we walk out to the metro stn only to discover that the gates were down!!!!!! as it turns out the metros close at 11:10pm. And since RS doesn't recommend hailing any taxi's in budapest (besides which, we were 2 vulnerable girls)...we decided to walk back to our hotel. only 4 metro stops away. how hard could it be? It was soooo creepy tho cuz everything was closed, the streets were virtually empty except for the occassional group of ppl walking past and every so often we'd have to stop to look at the map. Once we had to walk in an underground walkway to cross the street and the only other ppl in there were sleeping!!!! i really flew thru there. we got a little lost (some of the streets are SOOooo confusing. they really don't believe in 90 degree intersections...) but somehow found our way to vaci utca which had lots of pedestrians and made our way back to the hotel around midnight.
Oh. and i learned a new word today too. Funicular. the tram/train thing that goes up steeps hills/mountains.
Total walking distance: 5.39 miles
posted by ss @ 11:48 PM
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