Budapest Wrap Up

Last night, when I sat down next to Alex at knitting, she said, “So how was Budapest?”

I said, “It was good. You know. It was a nice trip. I mean…it was interesting. We had a nice time.” She could tell I was less than thrilled. I wasn’t doing the whole, “I loved it! It was amazing!” thing. I added, “It was nice to be away. There’s lots to see, but it was sort of…ih.”

She said, “A colleague of mine was in Budapest the same time you were and she said the same thing!”

I had the same experience with Istanbul. I had a friend at the time (who has since fallen off the face of the earth) who said, “You are going to love it. It’s wonderful. The history. The food. It’s…oh! I love Istanbul.” Later, when she read my blog posts about it, she said, “I’m sorry you didn’t have a good time.” We’d actually had a fine time, but at the end, it was sort of…okay, well, I’ve been there now.

Anyway, here is my Budapest wrap up in all its glory.

As you are probably aware, Budapest used to be two cities. Buda is on one side of the river and Pest is on the other. We were on the Pest side. The Christmas market was right down the street, which was nice. Lots of crafty stuff. Lots of fried sausages and lots of hot wine, which we never got around to trying. The Chain Bridge, which was also right outside our door, was our connection to Buda. We ended up walking back and forth three times during our stay. It’s a quick little trip with nice views of both sides from the middle.

The thing that really struck me was that the smoking ban inside restaurants and bars that is now law in most parts of the civilized world has not yet found it’s way to Hungary. It’s so strange to sit in a restaurant and smell cigarette smoke. It’s gross. “Smoking or non-smoking?” How Eighties is that? I can’t imagine what it’s like in the bars. We didn’t go out. There is apparently a lively bar scene, including gay bars, but we don’t really do the whole standing in a bar thing very well.

There’s plenty to see in Budapest. We walked up and down streets and visited a lot of little shops. There’s an amazing number of shops filled with antiques (read: brick-a-brack). And I was quite taken with the variety and quality of art produced by Hungarian artists. The National Gallery was a nice surprise. Of course the best parts were the Medieval and the pre-1945 sections, but that’s just my opinion. (And I requested that we focus our visit.) I was particularly taken with József Rippl-Ronai who I had never heard of. I also liked Károly Fernczy. Fred bought a print by Sándor Badacsonyi. Impressed? Me too.

The churches in Budapest (I think we went in three) were very dark - but really old and beautiful. They had mostly natural lighting and intricate stained glass windows. I’m not sure what the dark thing is all about, but it makes taking pictures challenging. We were in one that was particularly dark and an attendant showed us some Arabic writing from when the church had been turned into a mosque after the Turks invaded. (Those Turks!) There’s also the Parliament building, which is nice and right on the bank of the river. We missed out on taking a tour because they were out of tickets by the time we got there.

For the most part, the food was good. We tried to eat exclusively Hungarian food, but that was a challenge at some points. I had one meal that was three kinds of sausage with red cabbage. One of the sausages was a black sausage, which I would never have picked out of a line up. But it was really good. The restaurant we really wanted to try - Cafe Kor - was always full and we couldn’t even get reservations. The morning we left, we had breakfast in the cafe of a little restaurant on a tiny square a few blocks from out hotel. It was the Gerloczy Cafe & Restaurant. I wish we’d had a dinner there. It looked like it would have had that cozy feel I was looking for. I had an amazing omlet with a really crusty baguette.

Probably the most memorable and noteworthy experience was the afternoon at the baths. There are lots of them, thanks to those Turks. The one we went to was the Rudas Baths. Dating from 1550, it was extended in 1566. It wasn’t as touristy as the one we went to in Istanbul. I’ll write about it later because the experience deserves a whole post.

Maybe I’m just tainted from having been so many places in the past few years. Budapest really is a lovely city. If you get the chance to go, you should. There’s lots of history and the people are nice. The food is also good. See? I’m not really singing its praises. That’s strange. It was a good time.