Joseph Tainter wrote:
>
> Pest: St. Stephen's Cathedral has one of the most magnificent interiors
> I have seen anywhere. Here's a pic:
>
> http://pug.komkon.org/05may/stefndom.html
I was in Budapest in 2002 when they were restoring the cathedral. it
looks like they did a wonderful job, but at the time almost all you
could see inside was scaffolding.
We were there for only a few days and didn't get to see everything we
would have liked. We were avoiding organised tours and wandering around
seeing what we found. Below is an extract from the 19 page long travel
diary I kept while travelling Europe for a month mainly using a Eurail pass.
Leon
http://www.bluering.org.au
http://www.bluering.org.au/leon
=============================================================
21/10/2002 - Wien / Budapest
We hung around Wien to buy a book Audrey saw and to look in an antique
shop in which Audrey saw some Rosenthal figurines. We got the book but
the antique shop grew an "I'll be back in a week" sign.
Crossed the boarder on the train. Our passports were checked twice by
armed guards (only hand guns), and our tickets checked. After each stop
the guards walk down the corridor and look into the compartments.
Budapest.
Stranger in a strange land. In a way it is more alien than Japan. The
writing is in letters that I recognize, but the words make no sense!
The phrase book has helped a bit and so has menus in Hungarian and
English, but I have yet to attempt to speak Hungarian.
The guide book says tipping is expected. The taxi driver seemed happy
with the idea. The waiter in the restaurant seemed to think it wasn't
required. I'll stick to that in future. The guide book also says to
beware of young Hungarian girls who ask you to buy them a drink which
then turns out to cost US$1000. I'll trust Audrey to chase them all away.
There are touters out for the tourist dollar and I have to get used to
ignoring them (it's my nature to listen to people).
22/10/2002 - Budapest
I don't really like organized tours, but they do give you a basic
orientation of where you are. The Budatours tour we took drove very
slowly, but it gave you a chance to look around. They had a prerecorded
commentary which Audrey could hear well using the "T" switch on her
hearing aid.
When you buy a Budapest Card, time it to start when you will first use
it. This way a 48 hour card will cover 3 days.
We had a quick bite at (please forgive us) Burger King. Just chicken
nuggets and chips. Audrey is not sure about the food here, the German
style sausages and salamis have disappeared and the goulashes require
you to sit down which is not how we have tended to eat.
We did find a little pastry shop selling fresh cooked pastries (well you
expect that in a pastry shop) by weight. We only had a couple each but
they were nice. A nice young Hungarian girl (who did not ask me to buy
her a drink) translated the menu for us when she saw us looking in our
lonely planet phrase book. She went to Spain with only a Lonely Planet
book and took pity on us. Her English was very good but she
occasionally developed an American (US) accent.
We looked at the basilica, which is undergoing a complete refit inside
and out. There is more scaffolding here than in bigger churches (even
the one in Aachen). And that does not even include the square out
front, which is also being redone.
We went looking for a market at the end of the number 19 tram. It is
now a Spar supermarket. The building was the same, but the content was
gone. And of course it was raining.
We took the cable railway near the chain bridge to the palace. After a
quick look we bought some souvenirs and leapt on a bus we hoped went
somewhere useful.
It did, this is where we got the pastries and the Metro back to the hotel.
Had dinner at Keresztapa Restaurant, garlic soup with frog's legs
and.duck steak with pear and cranberry sauce.
23/10/2002 - Budapest
Busy day. Started with a visit to the Citadel. We bought some leather
cases for us and my girls and wandered through the place. It's a
wonderful view of the entire city. Information on the various
occupations is on display. Today being a national Independence Day
holiday meant that there were lots of locals up there as well - It was
also a beautiful day, which helped the crowd.
Had lunch at the pastry place from yesterday and then went to the zoo.
Many of the animals were on display with very little care for their
welfare, though it can't be too bad the kangaroos would have been able
to jump their fence if they had wanted to.
The elephants and hippopotamuses live in an old bath house, with the
hippopotamuses getting the bath as a pool. I don't think the sloth
liked the flash on my camera as it started moving away - rather rapidly
for a sloth. The 2 humped camels are onto a good thing - they stand at
the front of their enclosure and the tourists feed them.
On the move again to the Natural History Museum and a look at real moon
rocks. Well more large grains of sand, but genuinely from the moon. We
missed them the first time through because they are so small and had to
ask in German where they were. We also saw the world's largest quartz
crystal - which my eldest daughter would love but wouldn't fit in the
luggage.
Dinner was paprika chicken from the Grand Cafe Oktogon.
24/10/2002 - Budapest / Plockingen
We used the last bit of time on our Budapest cards to ride the Metro to
the station for our train. We have found that even in peak times the
front carriage of the metro is not crowded. This is a good thing when
dragging a suitcase along. I would have liked to have spent more time
here, but another few hours would not have made much difference in
getting a better understanding of the people. Next time.
