I'll Take Buda for $1000 Alex

Regardless, on Thursday we made it to a number of really cool sites. We took off for Buda's Castle Hill via the underground. On our walk through a park, we discovered an interesting 'lock tree' and thought it was so cute! We walked across the Szechenyi bridge, which has beautiful architecture. It leads directly to Buda's Castle Hill. We took the Siklo up to the top, which is like an incline. The Pittsburgh incline has a better view I'd say though ;)

On Castle Hill, we saw the Royal Palace, which is huge. On the opposite of the Pest side, we could see the Buda Hills, which were beautiful. I believe the ruins on the top were Buda Castle ruins, but I should actually confirm that before I write it! There was a cute little town on the top of the hill as well. We walked to the Matthias Church, Holy Trinity Statue, St Stephen's Statue and through the awesome vista of Fisherma's Bastion, which looked like a new age castle fortress wall along the cliff over the Danube River. The vista was directly across from the massive Parlaiment Building, which is on the Pest side of the River. Castle Hill was definitely worth the time, but I would skip the Siklo if I were to do it again.

We grabbed a vegan lunch at a placed called Eden then took the metro back. We had passed the interesting 'lock tree' in the morning, so we decided to get our own lock at a place on Vaci Utca, which had been open since 1856 so we could put a lock on the tree too. We rented a couple of bikes later in the afternoon. We rode bikes to dinner at a place called Bio Garden then also to a bar across the river on the Buda side called Cafe Rio, which turned out to be completely empty on a Thursday (HUGE bar too)! Kris was able to tether a pair of heels to my bike rack on the back of my bike:) We rode through the Raday Utca district to hopefully find something a little more happening, but to no avail. I guess the Hungarians go to bed early on Thursdays?

We started Friday by getting our lock engraved at the same place we bought it. Check out the photo :). Apparently it's just a random odd Hungarian thing to put a lock on the tree to symbolize your love, so after the engraving, we rode our bikes to the tree and put our lock on the tree:)
We pretty much rode our rental bikes around the rest of town all day, discovering much of the city we hadn't seen yet on foot or metro. We saw St. Stephens Basilica close up, but we should have gone inside, since I read later on how beautiful it was inside! Lunch was at Fruccola, a local working lunch place with super fresh food and of course fried cheese. I think I've eaten a little too much fried cheese by now though, I swear it is in ever dish! We checked out some local art stores too. I was a little tired from my cold, but we stuck through it pretty well though. We had dinner at the Soul Cafe - food was great!

Later that night, we went to an island in the Danube called Hajogyar (Oduba) Island, which has 9 different bars on it, kind of a party island, with all different types of themes and music at each bar. We had decided to ride our bikes there since cabs were a little expensive and the trams stop at midnight. The island was about 5 miles away, and I think we underestimated how far 5 miles actually is! It seemed like forever and it was dark and COLD! So on the way back we found a taxi van that fit both of our bikes in there for us!

written by  blondie on September 2, 2010 from Budapest, Hungary
from the travel blog: Central Europe
Send a Compliment

comment on this...