Budapest

Day 447 (September 18, 2019) – Budapest, Hungary

Our arrival in Budapest really felt like it was the beginning of the end. We had said goodbye to friends in Dusseldorf and Brussels and Travis and I were out on our own until we arrived back at home. It also came with slight feeling of panic because we had a lot of trip planning to do. We had been so busy the last few weeks that we had nothing planned or booked past Budapest. We had a rough itinerary, but no specifics worked out yet. We had a little over five weeks until we had to be in Rome to catch our cruise home and we had to make sure we left Europe’s Schengen area for an appropriate amount of time so we wouldn’t overstay our 90-day allowance.

On a walk around the neighborhood.

We had six days in Budapest, which was plenty of time to get all our planning done but given all the work we had cut out for us we didn’t explore as much of Budapest as we could have. Honestly, most of our time was spent on our computers in the apartment working out the logistics of the coming weeks. We were still weary of being travel agents, but this seemed like the last big push and we mustered up the energy to get most of it done. By the time we left Budapest we had an itinerary, most of our transportation figured out, and a handful of future accommodations booked. We would fill in the rest as we got closer.

The Hungarian food we had in Budapest was really good. Strong spices and lots of cream and cheese.

One of the highlights after working on travel plans all morning was heading out for lunch. On our first day we checked out a little restaurant down the street called the Drum Café. It was tasty, had a large menu of Hungarian staples, and was surprisingly inexpensive. They had a bean and beef goulash for only a few bucks that was extraordinarily delicious. It was super flavorful. I’ve added it to my list of things I want to learn how to cook when we’re home again. We ended up back at the Drum Café the next day, mostly out of laziness and in avoidance of having to search for and pick another restaurant. It was just as good. By the third day we gave up even pretending to want to go anywhere else and we continued to have lunch at that same café every day. We tried other places for dinner throughout the week, but we still thought this little cafe was the best of them all.

Lunch at our favorite restaurant in Budapest.

When we weren’t on our computers, we were walking around the city. Budapest is enormous, so we walked quite a lot. We made a huge circle around the city one day, starting from our apartment, crossing the Danube River, and walking uphill to see the Citadella. The Citadella is an old fort on top of a cliff alongside the Danube. The views of the city were great, but it was a really hot day to be hiking up such an elevation. We continued down the backside of the hill, walked along the river, and then up another hill to Buda Castle and also strolled around the Castle District for a while. The castle district felt more like a small European town with cobblestone streets, colorful houses, and a few old churches. It was like a little medieval island surrounded by the rest of middle modern-day Budapest.

The Danube River.

At the top of the Citadella.

The view over Budapest and the Danube River.

Budapest definitely has a strong late-night-going-out vibe. It can feel a little trashy at times, actually. Granted, we were staying in the late-night area because the accommodations were cheaper. As expected, there was a lot of noise at night from the bar directly across the street, but the apartment windows worked better than most at keeping the noise out. We happened to arrive on a Friday evening and the airport was packed with young people arriving from all over Europe, just in time for the weekend. I feel like 10% of the people leaving the airport already had an opened beer in hand. I don’t even know where you could have gotten them from! But as soon as they landed, they were ready for the weekend.

Matthias Church.

Around the Castle District.

Fisherman's Bastion

The Hungarian Parliament Building.

Travis had read that that the thing to do in Budapest is to hang out in one of the city’s ruin bars. These are bars created from abandoned buildings and plots of land. We visited the nearby Szimpla Kert. It’s a huge place filled with old furniture and eclectic decorations. There were bikes hanging from the ceiling and even an old car that got turned into a table. There were a few small stages, one of which was hosting a musician while we were there. Of course, I neglected to take any pictures of the décor, but I did get snap a picture of Travis, who looks a little too serious given the location. But it was an interesting experience. It’s not a bad place to hang out for a while, so we see why these ruin bars are so popular.

At Szimpla Kert, one of Budapest's ruin bars.

In the end, we may not have seen as much of Budapest as we could have, but we left with a plan. We were headed out of the Schengen Area and into Serbia. Then we would make an arc through Montenegro and into Croatia before swinging around the other way through Slovenia and into Italy. We had lots of long train journeys in our near future.