Eastern Europe travel stories- Budapest

The next day we decided to take a walking tour which was included in the Budapest card. The starting point was a cafe and since we reached before time, we had some delicious street pastry ’Kurtos Kalacs’ which was a sweet cylindrical bread coated with a caramel layer of melt sugar onto which cocoa,cinnamon or walnuts are added.

Adding to the sweetness, I saw a lovely women enter with blue glittering eyes who came to us and asked if we were waiting for the walking tour. She introduced herself as our guide for this and we just had a general conversation about where we were from.

There were around 20–30 people with us and all of us introduced themselves with their names and the places we were from. There were people from Germany, mexico, Singapore and other places in Europe. Despite everything, strangely I still felt good when amongst everyone from different nationalities,I said that I am from India.

The weather was warm and pleasant, a little hot in the afternoon but nothing compared to the summers here in Delhi. We did a walking tour of Pest which is on one side of the bridge over Danube river and the other side is knows as Buda.

The next thing on our mind were the ruin pubs which are the most unique thing in this city. We left around 11:00 PM after catching onto some sleep in between.

Thankfully the oldest ruin pub Szimpla Kert was pretty close by to where we stayed and after around 10 mins of walk we reached there. There was actually a queue to enter and I was surprised to see so many people.

The place was swarming with people despite the fact that it was quite big. It looked like an old abandoned building filled with antique things like an old TV with lot of cluttered wires. The ceiling was designed with a bicycle on it.

We took stairs to go up where there were a lot of open rooms each with a different theme but mainly consisting of weird, funny, strange old things which don’t match or make sense.

I never thought that such an imperfect place could also look so captivating and attractive. And yes without any doubt, Budapest has a very happening nightlife.

We were walking past various attractions with our guide stopping in between and explaining the history behind them which was quite interesting. We finally reached the Parliament which I felt is the most beautiful building in Budapest and the tram passing along it makes the entire place very fascinating and beautiful.

We were tempted to board the tram which runs along the Danube river and enjoyed the view of the city before heading back to our room. Since we had no destination on our mind before boarding the tram, I would say google maps has been our savior always when it came to finding our way back.

The Szechenyi thermal baths are quite popular so that is where we were heading for next. I had booked this online so that we could avoid the queue. There are outdoor pools with natural hot thermal water, felt quite relaxing in clean mineral rich waters in the warm weather. I couldn’t stop admiring the clear blue sky creating a mesmerizing effect in contrast to the yellow beautifully designed building of the spa bath.

Do book the tickets online in advance, as this place gets crowded during the busy hours.

We decided to visit the Fisherman’s Bastion since it is one of the most visited attractions and wasn’t quite far. We took the bus again and thanks to the Budapest card which made us skip the trouble of buying tickets each time we used public transport.

Fisherman's Bastion is a spectacular monument built in Buda castle. The entire area is an architecture marvel with medieval design towers,narrow alleys, turrets, staircases leading up to lookout terraces offering stunning views of the Pest side of the city and Danube river.

We were first greeted by the enchanting Gothic style church,commonly known as Matthias church. The church built in various gothic patterns, with stunning architecture was from another fairy tale land. Next to the church, was Fisherman's Bastion where we explored some of the look out terraces to enjoy great views of the city by entering through narrow staircases opening into rooftop terraces.

After wandering around and immersing ourselves into the beauty of this fairytale land, We were drawn towards a traditional Hungarian folk dance near the church.

It was a delightful atmosphere and a treat to the eyes to watch people with lovely colorful costumes happily dancing on the tunes of lively Hungarian folk music together with the locals.

This place was flocking with tourists and locals, making it bit of a challenge to get some good pictures.

After a long flight of around 8 hours with a layover in Moscow, we finally landed in Budapest. We bought the Budapest Card at the airport, which included free public transport in trams, buses and metros. Budapest has rich public transportation system, making it affordable and easier to commute and visit places especially with the Budapest card.

As soon as we stepped out of the airport, We hurried to find the bus to the Airbnb accommodation we had booked in advance. The bus was surprisingly crowded and we didn’t get place to sit. I actually didn’t mind since I realized that my vacation had finally begun :-).

The clear blue sky and the clean air is the first thing I felt and noticed since these are the main things which we are deprived of while living in Delhi. The host welcomed us in his beautiful house and gave us a Piano room.

I was really excited about having a room with a Piano in it and suddenly all my tiredness vanished after looking at the room he gave us. We didn’t expect that we would be sharing a house but it wasn’t any trouble and it was quite good since we got a chance to meet some fellow travelers sharing the same house.

As we had only planned one and a half day in Budapest, we didn’t want to waste much time in resting or sleeping. So, We took bath and got ready for our adventure in this foreign land. It was almost evening by the time we left from our Airbnb apartment.

We decided to explore eastern Europe and then detailed it out further to choose the countries we wanted to visit. I had actually never focused so much on the map of Europe before :-P, and now thankfully I know much more geographically about Europe after this trip !

Prague in Czech Republic and Budapest in Hungary were the must go places for us since they are quite well-known and famous destinations.

Salzberg in Austria was next on the list owing it's popularity to the beautiful Austrian alps. Croatia looked quite interesting with it’s stunning coastline but since it is not in EU, we thought it would require a different visa. Although later we got to know that multi-entry Schengen visa works for Croatia, giving us a chance to visit Zagreb.

The good part about not being aware of this information was that we zoomed into the map to find Slovenia which is a small country with 2 million population, just about one tenth the population of New Delhi :-).

We googled Slovenia to find breathtaking pictures of Lake Bled and Piran which instantly made us finalize Slovenia as the next destination to visit.

Since the return flights from Ljubljana which is the capital of Slovenia were pretty expensive, we chose Venice to take our return flight and also this gave us a chance to visit the beautiful city.

We booked the return flight via Turkish airlines with a layover of 7 hours in Istanbul and this made the trip even more exciting since now I could visit Istanbul as well :).

An outline of our 2 week Itinerary:

New Delhi->Budapest->Prague->Salzberg->Slovenia(Ljubljana,Bled,Piran) ->Croatia(Zagreb)->Venice->New Delhi

New Delhi to Budapest via Moscow:

We boarded the Russian Airlines Aeroflot flight from New Delhi to Budapest via Moscow.