Budapest, Hungary

March 12-13

There's a travel agency in Germany called L'Tur that specializes in last minute vacation packages and JP & I had found a terrific deal on a hotel & air trip to Budapest. Most trips on L'Tur are on pre-selected hotel dates and set airplane takeoff times and this particular one was perfect: the plane left Munich on Friday evening and returned on Sunday evening, so no need to take any vacation days and was only 160€ pp. that included a nice 3* hotel.

Our first morning walking down the street, everything looks pretty average European. Small cars and buildings that needed to be cleaned. (Notice the "black" buildings to the right of me in the pic.)


And then suddenly.....a building with bright green roof tiles! Ahh, this must be Hungarian.


This mailbox looks just like the ones in Germany, except Germany's are yellow.


This was a cool sight, looking down the road to a bridge, but unfortunately the buildings were so darn dirty! Do you see a pattern?


This is at Hösök tere, translated to Hero's Square. The statues behind us are leaders of old Hungarian tribes.


More cool statues at Hero's Square.


A replica of the castle in Transylvania, home of Count Dracula. (mwah ah ah ah ah)


It was freezing cold outside, but who can resist the hot springs of Budapest. This is one of the city's more popular, bigger and fancy bath houses.

People believe that the natural minerals in the water can have healing powers.

"Don't cry for me Argentiiiina...." This is the opera house were Evita's song was filmed.


This Jewish Synagogue in Budapest is Europe's largest, & the world's 2nd largest.


The Parliament building.

This is one of the coolest ones I've seen.

Here's a church with the fancy Hungarian roof tiles. I like the statue on the right because of the sculpture's great detailed work, especially the saddle decor hanging on the sides of the horse (or whatever that thing is called).


We bought the "Budapest Card" which gives you unlimited riding privileges on the subway system, free entrance to certain attractions, and a discount to many more attractions. One of the free places was the zoo, so we went there and saw many interesting animals...

What is this???

Remember that game, Hungry Hungry Hippo? It was quite amusing to watch these hippos just open their mouth, waiting for a person to throw anything edible in there.


More city touring. Although we couldn't go inside this church, the outside was cool enough to get a picture.


This was in front of a church cave overlooking one of the many bridges in Budapest. Clicking on the thumbnail will give you the pic large enough to cover your desktop as wallpaper.


Did you know Budapest is actually two cities? On one side of the river is the city of Buda and on the other side is Pest. The cave church is in Buda, so the picture is looking towards Pest. Pest is flat and has the main city life with all the hotels, apartments, government buildings, etc. Buda is directly on the other side of the river which is mostly hills and contains more of the natural attractions of Budapest, although there are plenty of buildings such as museums and residental housing.

And yes, a church housed by a cave! This is the "lobby" area and between the white columns is the door to the sanctuary. I couldn't go in because there was a service going on.


This is looking at the cave from a distance. You can see the statue on the left that was in the previous picture and the opening of the cave is in the middle.


I'm not sure what this building was but it looked really cool and you can see it had the colored roof tiles too. Our walking tour guide told us the colored roof tiles are a Hungarian specialty.


If you visit a city in Europe, I highly recommend going on a walking tour. This was my third one and I always enjoy them because they show you the highlights of the city and tell you about the history and culture of the people. They give me a better feel and insight of the place I'm visiting. It sure beats just walking up to a landmark, saying, "oohh pretty" and then walking on. The guides are also usually natives to the country or city or have lived there for quite some time. After the tour ends, you can get good recommendations from them of where to eat, other points of interest, nightlife, directions to the train station, etc. I would also recommend a walking tour over a bus tour. From my experience, bus guides feel so impersonal and their information seems to lack depth.

Hope you enjoyed your little tour of Budapest :).