Vienna 2010: Budapest Day Trip

Two days before we verified that the trip to Budapest was still on. If there weren’t enough people signed up then the company could cancel. We were told that the shuttle would pick us up at our hotel, and that we needed to be at the Opera House meeting point by 7:30, but we were not told when the shuttle would arrive. We assumed that 6:30 was early enough, so we planned to meet in the lobby then. However, at 6:15 my phone rang and it was my sister telling me that the shuttle driver was downstairs waiting for us. Luckily I was ready to go, since I had been up for 90 minutes. I ran downstairs to make sure the drive didn’t leave without us.

Once we were all ready, we boarded the shuttle, which made one more stop to pick up more passengers before we got to the tour bus. We arrived in plenty of time and the bus left once everyone was on board. There were about 20 people on this tour, which isn’t a lot unless you consider that it was a Tuesday during the off-season. The tour guide was a nice woman who apparently spoke English, Hungarian, Spanish and German. All but two of the passengers spoke English, so had to repeat everything in Spanish. There was one man from Russia that didn’t speak English very well, but his wife ( I assume it was his wife ) translated for him.

The bus ride to Budapest takes about two hours, and during that time the guide spoke about Budapest and Hungary. Once again it was information overload. I’d say that the two most important facts I remember is that Budapest is made up of two cities, Buda and Pest, and Pest is pronounced “Pesht”. Plus, once we arrived she pointed out that the Buda side was on a hill and the Pest side was completely flat. They were separated by a river Duna (or Danube). During the ride she also played a DVD about Hungary, which she called a “special surprise”, but we had read the reviews of this trip, all of which were positive, so we knew about the DVD. Many of the passengers either slept or listened to their iPods during this video.

I enjoyed the ride. It was nice to just relax and look out the window at the countryside. There were lots of farms, many with power-generating windmills, and small towns with small houses sitting amongst the green hills. I tried to take some photos out the window, but most turned out blurry.  Once we arrived in Budapest the guide once again pointed out sites of significance. In some cases, she repeated herself two and even three times. Our first stop was, well, even after being told three or four time, I can’t remember the name, but there was memorial, music house and perhaps a museum. As we drove through the center of Budapest the guide kept pointing out buildings that you could only see briefly if you looked down “the next street to the right”. Not much opportunity for photos.

At our first stop we immediately headed to the bathrooms. The bus had a bathroom, but it was very small like in an airplane, so I opted to wait. We only had about 15 minutes to walk around, so I took as many photos as I could of the buildings. Unfortunately, it was once again cloudy, with the sun poking out from behind the clouds occasionally. Lots of the buildings in this city were brightly painted and would have looked better with more sunlight. After our 15 minutes everyone boarded the bus for our next stop – lunch!

We crossed the river again and drove up a hill where the bus had to stop because large buses are not allowed to drive on the top of this hill because there are cave underneath and the buses could shake the ground and cause a collapse, I guess. So we walked five minutes to the designated restaurant for the lunch that we pre-paid for on the bus ride there. We had a choice of the standard Hungarian meal or a vegetarian substitute. Most people got the standard meal, which included Goulash soup, chicken with rice and a desert. My sister and I had a Hungarian beer because our goal was to have a local beer in each of the four countries. The beer was just another yellow fizzy beer, not much better than Budweiser. Overall I was not impressed with the food, and the family that skipped the lunch had the right idea.

After lunch the next leg of the trip was a one-hour walking tour of the area with a local guide. She led us around the streets, once again pointing out site of interest and also allowing us time to take photos. We ended up at a place that had a great view of the river and city below. There are quite a few very large and uniquely designed buildings, none of which we got to see up close or go inside, but were able to take photos of. At this point I think we all realized that it might be worth a return trip to stay a few days in Budapest. There is a lot to see and our time was limited on this trip.

After the walking tour ended, we got on the bus and continued the bus tour of Budapest. We drove back over the river to the Pest side, drove by more buildings, including the second largest Synagogue in the world. Who know that the second largest Synagogue would be in Hungary? The area we drove around was pretty near where we were dropped off for our two hours of free time, so we had an opportunity to explore some of these sites later.

Around 3:30 in the afternoon we were dropped off and given two hours to explore the city. The guild was pushing everyone to check out the Christmas market and the Café next door. With the sun setting fast, I did my best to get us to some sites before it got too dark for photos. We headed for the nearest Cathedral, or in this case a Basilica, which I can’t remember the name of, because they always make for good photos and have a climbable tower. I believe this one had a tower, but like most places in Budapest, they only took the local currency and not Euros. We could have exchanged some of our Euros, but decided it wasn’t worth it. So walked into the Basilica where I took my token photo of the pipe from the pipe organ. As we walked around we found the room that contained a mummified hand that belonged to someone. While we were looking, someone paid the 2 Euros to have the small case lit up. I snapped a few photos not realizing yet that someone had just paid for this, but I’m sure they didn’t mind.

Once outside the church, we looked at our map to see what else we could visit before we needed to head back. We walked down the street to the Opera House, but it was a rather boring building, so we started our walk back to the Christmas market. Along the way we took an underground tunnel where there was a train museum, but they didn’t take Euros so we skipped that site too.

Back at the market, we walked around some, but this market was not as good as the one in Vienna. They were selling more “made in China” merchandise and less homemade crafts. There was also a band playing what I assume was Hungarian Christmas music so we listened to them for a few minutes. It was starting to get very cold, and about that time a man that was on our bus walked by and said the café did serve good coffee, plus it was warm. So we went in and eventually ordered some coffee or cappuccino. We were getting short on time so we paid the bill and walked back to the bus. By now it was getting dark and many of the buildings along river are lit up very brightly at night, which provided great photo opportunities.

We then boarded the bus, which was comfortably warm. Everyone made it back on time except for the family with the rather well behaved son, who they must have taken 100 photos of. Once they made it to the bus, we headed out. The guide continued her commentary until we were outside the city. She promised that she would talk less on the way home, which she did. Since it was dark outside there wasn’t much to see. Luckily I brought my iPod and listened to music. I even fell asleep for at most five minutes, but that was long enough to give me a second wind. The ride seemed to take forever, but soon I recognized the Vienna airport, so I knew we were just 30 minutes away. The bus dropped a few passengers off before returning to the Opera House. Once there we boarded the smaller shuttle which took us to our hotel.

Even though it had been a long day, we were hungry and needed some food. So off to Wienerwald we went. I ordered the same beer and food as before and we had the same waitress. As I said before, the people in Vienna are very nice, but the people who worked in customer service were also very professional and took their job seriously. There was no small talk, just take the order and serve the food, but in a friendly way.

We got back to the hotel near 10 PM. Having been awake since 5 AM, it had been a very long but fulfilling day. I knew I would sleep well, even though we had another semi-early wake up time. Wednesday was our day trip to Bratislava, Slovakia. We wanted to maximize our time in the daylight, so we planned on a 7 AM meeting time in the lobby. Once I was in bed, I fell asleep quickly and into dreamland I went.