Budapest, Hungary--A Tale of Two Cities

 

St. Stephen's

Back home there is always this discussion over which side of the city (ours is divided by a river and a highway) is the better place to live. We always settle the argument by saying we live on the south side (actually between the river and the highway). It is much like that in Budapest which was originally two cities (actually three, but who's counting?). 

Buda is the hilly west side of the Danube and Pest (pronounced pesht) is the flat east side of the river. In November of 1873, Buda and Pest along with a neighboring town, Obuda, were officially merged to form the new city of Budapest and became the capital of Hungary. 

Opera House

A bridge called the Szechenyi Chain Bridge was completed in 1849 connecting the two sides. The bridge is one of the more colorful features of the illuminated structures along the Danube at night.

It was a busy place for riverboats. We counted twelve, four groups of three abreast tied to the shoreline. Ours was first in so at least we did not have to tramp through two others to get to shore. It didn't look like an easy time for the other boat that was disembarking and embarking passengers.

Budapest is a fascinating collection of architectural design, the most important feature of course being the Parliament building. I found it much more beautiful and intriguing than Parliament in London. 

Best chicken paprikash

This was to be a port where most would leave the ship and we would get a whole new bunch of travelers so there was a chunk of free time where energies were spent more on getting people off and on the ship. I had a self guided tour on GPS My City. The problem was that it didn't come anywhere near where our ship was docked and it was a late afternoon when we started out. I was defeated before we even got started since we were still recovering from the virus we'd had.

We did manage to make it to St. Stephen's Cathedral and the Opera House but the guided walk would take us even farther from the ship and we gave it up to find our was back again and see if we could locate a good place to eat dinner early as we had a night cruise booked to see the buildings lit up along the river.

We found the best restaurant at the base of the Marriott with chicken paprikash on the menu. After refreshing and changing into some warmer clothes for the evening, we returned and enjoyed the best chicken paprikash I've had since my aunt last made it years ago.

In order to get any available tickets for a nighttime cruise at a decent hour, I had to book with a company that was about a 48 minute walk from the ship. We opted to try Uber which was quite a different operation that included taxis rather than private cars. It all went well though. Our first ride was with a female driver who spoke no English but had a translator app on her phone when she needed it. There was no need however to translate what she yelled to another driver as she attempted a U-turn to drop us off.

We arrived almost an hour early but there were people already lining up at the dock area. One company's boat would pull up, unload and reload and be off and then the next on came in. There was a schedule posted at the walkway. It was quite a "well-oiled" production. Ticket scanned, drink handed to you, find a seat, enjoy the 40 minute view (it was said to be an hour but that included boarding and disembarking), glasses collected ten minutes before the docking, disembark and hear the crew scrambling to get everything in order for the people lined up on shore.

All in all though, the cruise was the only time we were going to get to see the Parliament building and others lit up at night as the riverboats are not allowed to cruise at night. No wonder--the river was full of sight seeing tours. It wasn't fairly pleasant, a little chilly at times but for the most part, most enjoyable.

The pictures tell it all.