Bucket List: The Boundless Beauty of Budapest

The first thing I saw when I got off the bus in the inner city.

In recent posts I've talked about going further afield for bucket-list trips to the Black Forest and Prague.

Budapest has also been sitting on my bucket list for a while, but more as a place I felt I should see rather than a top-of-the-charts destination.

Well, that's certainly changed.

Debating a trip to Istanbul or Budapest recently over the long Easter weekend, Budapest won out for budget and security concerns. I could not be happier that it did!

Looking across the river from Pest into Buda
at Matthias Church and the fisherman's bastion

On Saturday I had an early-morning flight and then took the express bus from the airport to the center of the city. Although my guest house was just a five-minute walk from the stop, check-in wasn't until the afternoon, so I'd already booked myself on a free walking tour that morning.

It was the best walking tour of that type I've ever taken in terms of getting a deeper history of the city and relating things like architecture to the socio-political events of different eras.

The shoes on the Danube is a memorial to 3000+
people executed on the riverbank during
WWII. They were forced to remove their shoes
and face the water before being shot with arrows
so their bodies would fall into the river
and be washed away.

Even though I had visited Estonia (albeit only for the Christmas market and some light sightseeing) and Prague, I felt the imprint of the communist legacy more acutely in Budapest, probably due to the tour guide's very frank stories about the darker side of Hungarians and their history.

This a memorial in front of the Parliament building.
In October 1956 students gathered on the square here
waiting for politicians to address their concerns about
communism. Instead, the students were slaughtered
by snipers, sparking eventual armed revolt within the city,
which was also brutally repressed.

View from my early-evening ride
on the Budapest Eye. That's St. Stephen
in the background, the city's
largest Catholic church
and named for the country's founder.

Our tour wandered through part of Pest and then across the Danube into Buda, where we climbed up the castle hill and ended on the fisherman's bastion. While wandering through a nearby Easter market, I had a lunch of Budapest's most popular street food, then briefly checked into my room and ducked out again to do some shopping before taking a ride on the Budapest Eye, enjoying a nice dinner and resting my weary feet for the night.

Looking across the Danube from Buda into Pest

The main foyer of the
Hungarian National Museum
looks more like a cathedral

Easter morning was all about random exploring. I wandered in the area near the Parliament building, headed to the Hungarian National Museum to see their permanent exhibit on the country's history, and hit a couple more stores before grabbing lunch and resting up for my next planned activity.

That was an Urban and Street Art tour through the Jewish quarter. Although not as richly detailed in history as my tour the previous day, it was a fabulous glimpse into making the run-down and abandoned into something beautiful. And it culminated in a drink with some of my fellow tour-mates in one of the city's famous ruin bars.

There are two art groups working in Budapest
to cover exposed walls from war damage
and bring a vibrancy to these areas

Part of the inner courtyard of the Fogas ruin bar.
Tried my first palinka, which has an
extremely high alcohol content and
is, as one tour guide described,
like drinking flavored nail polish remover.

From the bar I wandered a bit more on my own, thinking about what I learned, what I was seeing around me, and comparing Budapest to other places I've visited.

Particularly in relation to Prague--which at one point was part of a shared kingdom with Hungary--Budapest seemed to have retained more of the "bohemian" vibe over the centuries.

I was genuinely sad at the thought of leaving on Monday morning. There was so much more of the city I wanted to explore. My trips in the past have usually focused on seeing as much as I can of a place under the assumption that there are so many other places in the world to see that I probably wouldn't come back.

Yet Budapest was one of the rare places where I could understand the desire to re-visit time and time again. There were so many more museums and attractions to explore. Different quarters of the city to see. And, like in Hamburg, different seasons to experience changes on and around the river.

So, as I let Larry know, I'd be happy to make Budapest home for a while should the opportunity arise in the future! 😄

Lángos, street food traditionally consisting of 
fried dough with garlic, sour cream and cheese on top

Dinner on Saturday night was at the oldest
restaurant in Pest, and of course I ordered the
goulash. It was divine!

Words to live by! And I did, in fact, come back later when
the market was open and try one of the chimney cakes
dusted in sugar and cinnamon.

Speaking of the future and new opportunities, stay tuned for my next (and final) post for this blog...