Beautiful Budapest! (Budapest)

Member Name: bluejules

Product:	Budapest
Date:	26/05/07 (273 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: *

Disadvantages: *

Budapest is the capital city of Hungary. Hungary is located in Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Croatia and Slovenia. Budapest is the seventh largest city in the European Union.


Buda and Pest became united as Budapest in 1873. Buda and Pest are located on opposite banks of the River Danube, with Buda on the west and Pest on the East. The hotel I was staying in was located on the riverside of Pest.

~ Airport ~
There is only one airport in Budapest - Budapest Ferihegy International Airport. The airport is quite small and is located 10 miles (16km) south east of Budapest. It took us about 20 minutes by taxi to our hotel (which was located in the city centre.) there is currently no light rail access to Ferihegy but there is an airport articulated bus which leaves for the city centre every 20 minutes. Car-rental is also available from the airport.

We had four days to explore Budapest. That may not sound like a long time but we managed to cram an awful lot of exploring into those days! I will go through which attractions we visited each day to give you an idea of how long it takes to see the main sights.

~ Day 1 ~
We arrived in Budapest quite late on the Monday night so the Tuesday was our first day. We decided just to have a walk round the city and find our bearings. My dad had been reading about the Royal Palace (which we could see from our bedroom window) so we decided to head in that direction.

The Royal Palace is located in Buda. It dominates the Buda skyline as seen from the city-centre Pest embankment. To get to the palace from our hotel we needed to cross the Chain Bridge. Once across the Danube we paid to go in the Funicular, which is like a mini train to take you up the hill to the castle. It did not cost much to travel in this and it was the easiest way up to the castle. You could return back down using the Funicular but we decided to walk. There was a tour guide there offering an hour-long tour but at £12 each we decided to give it a miss and just have a walk around ourselves. The views from the Palace grounds were amazing. We didn't go inside any of the buildings but many of these house museums.

On our walk down from the Palace we headed for Fisherman's Bastion. The Fishermen's Bastion offers a grand panorama of almost the entire city. It is situated at the eastern side of Castle Hill. The architecture of the building is beautiful. It has lovely staircases and turrets. The aim of the architecture was to provide a setting for Matthias Church (which was closed when we were there). The views from Fisherman's Bastion were amazing and it was well worth a visit.

~ Day 2 ~
We walked about 5 miles on our first day (I measured it on my new pedometer) so we wanted to have a less energetic day.

We decided to go to Statue Park, which is a park displaying many large memorials from the Communist Dictatorship. As you can imagine when communism fell the local people wanted to destroy the statues. Someone had a clever idea to save them all and place them in a park for tourists to look at. The park can be reached by public transport from the city centre. There is also a direct bus. The direct bus costs approximately £7 and this includes the entrance fee. We chose to take the direct bus, as we didn't know the times of the return public buses and the direct bus takes you back to the city centre. We were at the ark for about an hour, which was plenty time to have a look around. Unfortunately, it was extremely muddy, so much so that it was literally over our shoe tops. They were so considerate that they put out a bucket of freezing cold water and a soft brush for us to clean our shoes! This took up at least 20 minutes of our hour. We didn't look at all of the statues because some areas were much muddier than others were. Last night we were watching our holiday footage and since my dad has put appropriate music onto it, watching the Statue Park was very moving. I think because it was muddy we weren't thinking about what the statues represented so we didn't really experience much of the emotion. I think this is definitely an attraction for the summer as there were also lots of leafless trees and grass which wasn't green due to it being winter so it would also be more aesthetically pleasing in the summer (as well as being less muddy!)

We went on an evening River Cruise along the River Danube. The duration of the cruise was 1 hour and included in the price of the ticket (approximately £12) was 2 drinks: the first was champagne and the second was a choice from wine, beer and soft drinks. There is a sound and vision show where kings, queens poets, inventors and even the Danube tells you stories about the city. Through TV screens - hanged everywhere on board - you can look behind the walls of the buildings passing by. The city is beautiful at night. My mam and I thought the way the story was told through the 'life' of the Danube was really effective in adding originality to the tour. My dad however thought it was stupid as rivers can't talk!

~ Day 3 ~
We got the Metro to the City Park where the Zoo, Thermal Baths, Heroes Square, Outdoor Ice rink, and Circus are located. The metro only cost about 40p each.

Heroes Square - is next to the City Park and is the biggest square in Budapest. The Millennium Monument is located here, which was erected to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the Magyar settlement. We got some nice photos from here.

Outdoor Ice rink - my dad and I had great fun skating round the outdoor rink. It took us about 20 minutes to get our skates and proceed to the rink. When hiring the skates you need to leave a £15 deposit or have proof of identity. We didn't know this before we went but fortunately we had enough money on us to leave two deposits. The actual skate hire was just a couple of pounds and you got an hour on the ice. We had no trouble getting our £30 pound back and it was great fun skating outdoors - something I have never done before.

Circus - closed due to the time of year.

Zoo - we went to the zoo, but again due to the time of year it all of it wasn't open and lots of the animals weren't where they were supposed to be - perhaps they were just sleeping indoors!

We didn't go to the thermal baths but the building was beautiful.

~ Day 4 ~
This is the day we travelled home but as our flight wasn't until about 8pm and our hotel said they would look after our cases we decided to continue our exploration of Budapest!

We visited Citadel - the fortress on top of the hill, it was built between 1850 and 1854. From here the view is absolutely fantastic, you can see the view of the city, both Buda and Pest. Located here is The Liberation Monument, which was erected in 1947 to commemorate the liberation of the country and in honour of the soldiers of the liberating Soviet Army. The female figure holding the palm of victory is 40 metres high. There were quite a few little stalls selling nice souvenirs located here. We got a taxi up to Citadel but we walked down. There were lots of steps but there was also a section, which had a few slides. These were wide enough for me to fit on so I took this opportunity to relive my childhood and travelled down a small part of the hill on a slide! There were a couple of children's play parks on the way down so if you were there with children and the walk down the hill was boring them you could stop for five and let them play in the park.

And that's where my holiday in Budapest comes to an end. Hope you enjoyed reading about my experience

Summary: Great City