Last week, Tilly and I got the train together to the airport to meet her friend Natalya and her sister Sophia, and a very exciting week in a few different cities across Europe commenced. I suspect this might end up being quite a long post, so I’m going to break it down into the three main places we went to: Budapest, capital of Hungary; Bratislava, capital of Slovakia; and Vienna, capital of Austria. 🤭
Our first destination was Budapest, and we arrived there late at night on Monday the 19th. Our apartment was a short walk away from the shuttle bus station, but we still got to pass by some beautiful sights, not least the famous Dohany Street Synagogue which was just a couple of minutes from our accommodation. The city is beautiful at night with all the electric lights, the clatter of street food stalls, teenagers stumbling back from night clubs and busy commuters running to make trains, so we all came away with an awed first impression of this bustling city. We finally flopped into bed at around midnight after an emergency run to Tesco for a quick pasta dinner.
The next day, we got up as early as we could bring ourselves to, ready to start a jam-packed day. We all agreed that, seeing as we only had five days here, we should try and cram as much sightseeing, nighttime strolling and national dish eating as we could in the limited time we had.
We began our first morning in Budapest by strolling around the city centre and generally getting our bearings. Here I am plunging my face into a traditional Hungarian ‘chimney cake’ – a sort of sweet, freshly baked bread that you unroll to eat. Mine was coated in chopped hazelnuts. It was delicious!
Our first sightseeing stop was the Hungarian State Opera House. It was free to go inside the first main bit, but we couldn’t go past that lobby area – unless we were going to see an opera, of course! This was a stunning building built in the late 19th century. I found it fascinating to compare English 1800s architecture with Hungarian, and indeed, Austrian and Slovakian too, in the later legs of our journey.
St Stephen’s Basilica was our next stop: a spectacular church built throughout the 19th century in commemoration of Hungary’s first king, St Stephen. (His preserved hand is actually on display within the Basilica!) The Basilica was definitely one of my favourite places, if not the one favourite place, that we visited across the whole of our time away. Every step took you to a new breathtaking painting, floor or ceiling, statue, altar. The intricacy of the artwork was stunning. I could have sat in there all day just drinking it in.
Look for the fist curled up on the red-brown pad thing in the photo above… that’s St Stephen’s hand.
After seeing the Basilica, we went on the hunt for some lunch. On our hunt we came across a park where a monument was built to commemorate the victims of Hungary’s German occupation during World War II. This statue has a very controversial history; it shows the Archangel Gabriel, which represents Hungary, being attacked by a German imperial eagle. When the statue was built a few years ago (literally under cover of darkness), there were a number of protests organised by those who believed it promoted a false image of the Hungarians and their role in sending 450,000 Jewish people to their tragic deaths in the war. Along the gate that surrounds the monument are photos, postcards and letters from the war, along with the actual shoes, briefcases and other possessions of some of those Jews who were killed due to the part Hungary played in the Holocaust.
We were determined to find somewhere authentic and traditional to eat our lunch, and we came across a street food stall along the main road selling pitas, durums and more. We all got a delicious warm pita bread overflowing with kebab meat, pickled red onions, salad, yoghurt and chillies. We made sure we were getting the full Hungarian experience by asking the vendor what he would recommend filling our pita with.
At this point in the day, we were very tired and dying from the 30 degree heat. (Little did we know that it was only going to get hotter!) We found a shady area of a park and actually all took a nap!
Later that day, we went out for a Hungarian dinner. Unfortunately, we were lured into a bit of a ‘tourist trap’. Tilly ordered a catfish curry with traditional egg-noodle-dumpling-gnocchi things, which unfortunately neither of us were a fan of. I got a beef goulash with rice, and it was a bit cold, as though it had been reheated but not all the way through! So we were slightly disappointed with that dinner, but at least we had learned our lesson to look properly through reviews before hastening off to a place just because it said ‘Hungarian food!’ on it.
After dinner, we wanted to see Budapest again at night, so we timed our walk to the Danube so that we could see the sun setting. It was definitely one of the prettiest nights I have experienced in my lifetime.
The next day, Wednesday, was probably the hottest day we experienced in Budapest, with temperatures in the high 30s all day. It also happened to be the day we decided to do an awful lot of walking, exposed to the sun at pretty much all times (although slathered in suncream and always with a hat on!). We began the day by crossing the Erzsebet Bridge again and climbing a good couple of hundred feet to see the city from above, and also a statue which is probably quite famous but I don’t know what to Google to figure out what it was 😂 We also found a guy conning people with that which-cup-is-the-coin-under game.
We then hiked all the way back down again and moved further along the river to Buda Castle, where we explored some of the gardens and the art gallery inside. There were some beautiful views from the top of this location too.
For dinner that day, we went out to another traditional Hungarian place, this time one that was genuine! We got a langos (pronounced ‘langosh’ – they generally pronounce ‘s’ as ‘sh’, so ‘Budapest’ is actually ‘Budapesht’), which is as deliciously unhealthy as it sounds: a deep fried flatbread covered in cheese and whatever other toppings you choose. I had a Mexican style langos, so it was covered in chilli con carne, and Tilly had a tzatsiki chicken one. It was absolutely delicious. I could not stop stuffing my face with this cheesy, beefy, deep fried delight. You can see the genuine excitement in my eyes as I dig in…
The next day, we completed a whopping 32,000 steps. We began our day by walking along the Danube towards Margaret Island. There is a war memorial on one side of the Danube; statues of shoes line the bank to commemorate the Jewish men, women and children who were shot into the river in WW2. It was a deeply thought-provoking place to be. I don’t have any photos of it as it somehow felt wrong when I saw everyone crouching down to get the best angle of the little baby shoes.
As we walked further along, we found some lovely views of the Buda side of the city. At this time of day it was about 35 degrees, my shirt was soaked through, and every five minutes we were wiping thick sweat off our foreheads and necks. It was really gross but luckily that doesn’t seem to have shown up in any of our selfies 😂
We finally made it to Margaret Island, which lies in the middle of the Budapestian Danube. This place is known for its beautiful scenery, and it definitely lived up to our expectations. We were even willing to make the 40 minute walk through the dripping heat to the complete other end of the island to see the Japanese Gardens. We saw a turtle there!
The Hungarian Parliament building is one of the prettiest places I have ever seen! We got some great views of it from both the Buda and Pest side of the city and on Margaret Bridge too.
On the way back to our apartment for a much needed shower, we found one of these things that sprays freezing cold mist on you to cool you down. You’re supposed to just walk through it as you pass by to give you a nice moment of refreshment, but Tilly and I spent about five minutes under this until we were drenched.
Later that day, we got a falafel salad box thing, and ate it on the steps of the Basilica (how posh does that sound!). We then had a refreshing nighttime city stroll (still about 30 degrees at this point, but there you go).
On our last day in Budapest, we visited Vajdahunyad Castle, an art gallery and the Great Market Hall. It was very interesting to see Vajdahunyad, as the architecture was entirely different from other places we had seen in the city. Parts of it looked like it was from some kind of fairytale story, and other parts seemed like they would be a perfect setting for a Dracula remake.
We were all excited to go to the Market Hall, as we hoped it would be full of traditional Hungarian things at reasonable prices. We hoped most of all that it would be full of Hungarians, not tourists. Unfortunately it was clearly very much tailored to the tourists of Budapest. There were few authentic Hungarian things on offer and everything was ridiculously overpriced. We did come across an interesting little find though – a cute pot of paprika honey infused with chillies, which we took home as a present for our mum.
The art gallery trip was very interesting too. It had an exhibition on a fascinating Hungarian artist called Lajos Gulacsy, a troubled painter whose works have a dreamlike yet disturbing quality to them. He used to dress up in costumes from various periods of history and then paint self-portraits of himself wearing them. Which is a bit weird.
As it was our final day in Budapest, we all went out for a dinner which we’d been saving. Although it was called ‘tourist menu’, which sounds like a bit of a red flag, we inspected the reviews at length and decided we would take the risk! I’m very happy that we did, because this three course meal was cheap, delicious and traditional. The starter was a flavourful beef goulash soup served with fresh bread. The main was paprika chicken in a tasty sauce with the same egg dumpling things that Tilly tried a few days previously – unfortunately no one liked those 😬 The rest of the course was delightful, though. My favourite was, of course, the dessert, which was a traditional sponge cake served with whipped cream and melted chocolate. The sponge had the texture of a tiramisu sponge just without the coffee flavour. It was heaven on a plate!
The next day, we were up bright and early to catch the train into Bratislava, Slovakia. Watch this space for my post on how that part of our holiday went 😊