Budapest

  Budapest, Hungary
Tuesday, November 28, 2000

This was the second time that I had been in Budapest and I really liked it the first time that I went there. The second time turned out to be just as enjoyable and it was nice to be in a familiar setting, already knowing where everything was.
While here we visited the castle hill on the Buda side of the city. We visited the underground labyrinth of the transformed tunnels, caves and cellars before heading up the hill past the huge Vienna gate to the Fisherman's Bastion overlooking the Danube River. We also visited the independence monument, citadel and crossed the many splendid bridges before visiting the parliament.



It was my 21st birthday while here and Emilie tried to organise an awesome day which didn't go entirely according to plan. First we went to an amusement park that when we got there it was completely wrecked and more like a junkyard. We ended up going to the Zoo instead which was fun. Then we went to the Szechenyl Thermal baths where Emilie was going to organise a massage for me, except it was the only day that there were no massages there. We ended up soaking in the hot springs for about 3 hours and it was pretty relaxing. Then we walked to a Restaurant that Emilie had phoned up for and they had assured her that we didn't need a reservation however when we got there the place was full. Emilie now in tears had pretty much given up. After telling her that she wasn't to cry on my birthday we ended up in another restaurant that turned out to be really nice. In the end I had a pretty good birthday despite some of Em's plans going astray.



We also took a day trip from Budapest to a place called Szentendre on a very wet dreary day. Szentendre had just enough to offer to turn it into a comfortable day trip. We had a look at the two churches here and spent plenty of time at the excellent museum before having lunch at a winery, which served some pretty amazing goulash soup.



We also visited the charms of the small baroque city of Eger in Northern Hungary swayed us enough to stay a couple of nights here. We ended up staying in another home-stay here. While in Eger we visited the Cathedral, Minorite Church and took a guided tour through the Castle and underground tunnels hewn from solid rock. We also took a trip to visit some of the wine cellars that are located on the outskirts of the town, sampling the famous 'Bulls Blood' wine. The final place that we visited were the Archbishops gardens where there were some Thermal baths that we had a soak in.