Budapest, Hungary (Day 5)

Our last day in Budapest! Once again we had a delicious breakfast cooked by our hostel before we set out on our day's sights. We were crossing over the bridge to the Pest side of Budapest. Our day started a little later than the previous days because we knew our train did not leave until 11:30 pm, and we did not want to have a lot of time to kill before we had to depart. The day started by going to the train station to buy our train tickets for the night. We decided again to not book a compartment and take our chances on getting our own compartment. With tickets in hand, we took the Metro to the bridge right near the Market Hall (the bridge to get over to Buda). We made a quick stop in the Market Hall for a sweet langos before crossing the bridge. :)

We decided to tackle Gellert Hill first. At the bottom of Gellert Hill, there is a church built into the side called the Cave Church. Although we did not get to go in, I took a picture from the bridge.  

You can see the church along the bottom of the hill and the statue at the top of the hill that was our final destination. There were many steep steps, but lots of places to stop and take a picture with great views of the Danube and Pest side in the background. This picture was taken by several men from Germany, I think. They took a picture of us, and then we took a picture of them.

At the top of the hill is a monument called the Freedom Statue. It was built in 1947 in remembrance of the Soviet liberation of Hungary from Nazi forces during World War II. The statue is a 14 meter tall bronze statue that stands on top of a 26 meter pedestal. Basically, it is huge!

 Freedom Statue

Directly behind the Freedom Statue was the Citadella. I am still not sure what the Citadella is or what it looks like because we were not allowed to go inside. However, there were some great photo opportunities by the Citadella that provided a good background of the Buda palace and Danube River. We again asked two guys if they would be kind enough to take a photo of us. After a little small talk, I found out that one of the guys was from Louisiana and graduated from LSU. We talked about how great the Tigers were and about the next cities on our vacations. It's funny that I would meet someone who went to LSU half-way across the world! And they took a great photo!

 You can see the river, some of the castle, and the chain bridge (the first bridge that connected Buda and Pest before they were ever Budapest) in the background

On our way down Gellert Hill, I had to stop and consult the map. I asked Layne to please take a picture of this because I spent a lot of time with my face in the map. It was a typical Lauren position for this portion of the trip. Anyways, once we made it down Gellert Hill, we had to climb up another hill to reach the Castle district. Here was where the Buda Palace, the Matthias Church, and the Fisherman's Bastion were located. The Palace was big, but otherwise uninteresting. The Matthias Church was very pretty in my opinion. I loved the tiles on the roof. Sadly, it was also under construction so we could not see the inside. I am still not sure exactly what the Fisherman's Bastion is, but from what I gathered, it is a terrace with seven towers that overlooks the Danube. The seven towers represent the seven Magyar tribes that settled in the Carpathian Basin in 896. Supposedly it was named after a guild of fishermen that was responsible for defending stretch of the city walls where it is located in the Middle Ages. I still do not understand its purpose though! Actually, we spent some time looking for the Bastion after seeing it. On the map it looked a lot farther from the Matthias Church, but when we looked it up online afterward, it turns out we saw it!

 The Buda Palace

 Matthias Church

 One of the towers of the Fisherman's Bastion

After these sights, we crossed a different bridge back to the Pest side. The bridge we went on was connected to a famous island called Margaret Island. A lot of recreational events take place on Margaret Island, but not much for tourists to see, so we skipped it. While on the bridge, we were stuck behind this really slow-walking couple. The bridge was also under construction and was only wide enough for 3 people to walk on. Anytime we tried to pass them, they seemed to sense it, and shifted to that side not allowing us to pass. It was probably quite humorous watching us try to pass them. We were unsuccessful until they turned off to go to Margaret Island. We headed back to the hostel to hang out until dinner.

Since it was our last night and we had time to kill until our train, we went to a nice, sit-down restaurant for a traditional Hungarian meal. After looking on the menu, we both decided on chicken paprika stew with egg dumplings. As I said before, Budapest is known for their paprika, so I felt I needed to try at least one paprika dish before I left. This is what we got:

Not exactly what I would call stew! It was a chicken leg and chicken breast in a paprika sauce. Although it was not what I was expecting, it was really good. The egg dumplings were so good! Layne was not as impressed, but I thought it was tasty none the less. After dinner, we went to this little cake shop we had seen for dessert. I actually had two pieces because they were so cheap and good. It was still early when we finished dessert, so we hung out at the hostel before we had to leave to catch the train. We thought we left with plenty of time, but we had an unexpected time-consumer. When we arrived at the Metro to get our tickets, the ticket counter was closed. They have ticket machines, but they only accept change and neither of us had change. Most of the shops were closed at this time of night, so we had to scramble for change. When we finally got some, it turns out the ticket dispensers were not working. Another homeless man was selling tickets, so we each bought one from him and got on the tram. However, by the time we got on the train, we only had 25 minutes until our train left. 

Luckily, we got to the train in time, but there were no empty compartments left. This meant we had to share with someone. We found this guy sitting alone in one and asked if we could sit with him. He was from Serbia and was very nice. And it turned out he was getting off about two hours into the trip, so we had to the compartment to ourselves for most of the ride. We got lucky again! He asked us all the Serbian words we knew, and told us about when he visited Istanbul. Overall, I really liked Budapest and would recommend everyone to go!