:: Saturday, April 08, 2006 ::

Buda the head! (Part the First)

Finally I have a chance to write about our post-Ides of March trip to Budapest, the capital of Hungary, way back on the 16th through 19th of March.

We were supposed to go with a few friends on an overnight train from Prague to Budapest on Thursday the 16th, but unfortunately they brought only their reservations and not their actual tickets. They resolved to take the first train on the 17th and meet up with us in Budapest Friday afternoon, which left me and the Polka dot with a 6-person couchette compartment to ourselves. So the trip passed mainly in blissful sleep, albeit with wake-ups at 3 and 5 am so officials could check our passports as we crossed into Slovakia and Hungary, respectively.

We arrived in Budapest round abouts 7 am, and headed for the Marco Polo hostel, which may be the best hostel in the entire world. Cheap (3000 Hungarian forints a night for a dorm bed, about $13 US), neat, and clean, with a variety of room types over 5 floors. We had considered getting a private double room, but opted for 2 dorm beds instead for financial considerations. It turned out to be a good plan - a dorm room at the Marco Polo only holds 12 beds, and our two were completely separated from the other beds by divider walls and curtains, so we could actually make our own private mini-room. We each had our own luggage locker/wardrobe with lock and 2 bathrooms to share with the rest of the room. In our two nights there, we never had to wait for a bathroom or shower, and our roommates were all well-behaved and quiet. Finally, the hostel also has a basement pub where you can hang out and eat and/or drink, and where they also serve free breakfast every morning. I want to back to Budapest just to stay at the Marco Polo again! ;)

Anyways, we hopped the metro for 1 stop to the hostel (we could have walked, but we really had very little idea of where we were), checked in and dropped off our stuff, and headed out into the city. We weren't really sure what to do, as we had expected to plan our day with our friends, who hopefully had more information about what Budapest had to offer. But that plan was obviously out, so we just wandered towards the center, and eventually ended up at the Danube, which divides the city into its two constituent halves, Buda, on the right (western) bank, home to Buda Castle (and including Obuda, or "Old Buda"), and Pest, on the eastern bank, where we and our hostel were. Unbeknownst to me, Budapest had originally been three different towns (as you can see if you look at old novels or maps where it's referred to a Buda-Pest), and weren't incorporated into one city until 1873.

Polka dot on the Danube, Buda Castle in the background

The famous Chain Bridge over the Danube, between Buda and Pest

The impressively Gothic Parliament building, on the Pest side

We headed back to the hostel in the afternoon to take a quick nap and meet up with our friends, but we couldn't find them. (It turned out that they had arrived slightly later than anticipated, and did not have roaming activated their phones, so they hadn't been able to call us or receive any of our calls or texts to them. And just as we headed downstairs to the pub before going out, they were going upstairs to our room, so we missed each other.) Not knowing any of that at the time, we once more struck out into the city, this time heading deeper into Pest in the opposite direction to Heroes' Square, where statues honoring the great Magyar heroes of old are displayed. Beyond the square, we also found Vajdahunyad Castle, beautifully lit up at night, and so we spent a little time wandering around there as well.

Heroes' Square in the twilight's last gleaming

Vajdahunyad Castle at night

Inside the castle grounds

We headed back to the hostel on the yellow metro line, which was the first underground subway line in continental Europe (starting operation in 1896), and where the train and stations are still decorated to look the way they originally did, complete with beautiful wrought iron railings, old turn-of-the-century advertisements on the wall, and announcements for the next stop preceded by a decidedly 19th-century -sounding organ-like tone. It was quite cool, like stepping back in time! We stopped off for dinner at a Pizza Hut, of all places (for good ol' American comfort food; sadly, while Prague has no dearth of McDonalds and KFCs, it has a decided shortage of Pizza Huts and Taco Bells), before winding up at the hostel's basement pub, where we finally found our friends. We had a few drinks, caught up a bit, made plans for the morrow, and headed for bed.

Up next: Day Two

:: posted by Rob 10:37 AM [+] ::

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