Her View 

Hungary - Caywood's perspective

We missed our train from Zagreb to Budapest, so rather than getting there at 5pm like planned we arrived just after 9. We went straight to our hostel, which was in a great location smack dab in the middle of the city. The next morning we started our views of Budapest with a free walking tour at 10:30. We had a great tour guide who was really fun and gave us a great mix of funny stories and real history. With the walking tour we saw a few different squares the city has, learned of the Communist history in Budapest, the correct pronunciation of the city’s name, and more. We saw from afar the Royal Palace, Capital Hill, Gellert Hill and the thermal baths, the Chain Bridge, etc. We walked through a Christmas market and past St. Peter’s Church, and learned which food and drinks to take part in. Unfortunately I did not dress warm enough, so we ended up leaving the tour about 30 minutes early. This was a mistake, because it led to me eating a piece of bread and having to visit the dentist! Luckily, the dentist was able to fit me in and fix my tooth very quickly, but we pretty much wasted our afternoon. We headed back to the hostel to relax and cook, only to find the kitchen being used by a group of about 50 people who weren’t even staying in the hostel. This was just not our day.

Since the kitchen was out of use for us, we walked down the street to one of the Christmas markets and got some amazing delicious Hungarian food - some of their local bread (I can’t remember the name!) and a potato pancake with cheese and bacon on the top. A-MA-ZING. So good. This food certainly made up for us not being able to use the kitchen, and we reused what we planned to make dinner with in the morning for breakfast.

Day two in Budapest started with what we were most excited for - thermal baths! We were recommended both the Gellert Baths and the Szechenyi Baths, and after research on both we ended up choosing the Gellert Baths, pretty much only because their location was more convenient for us. When you do your research, you’ll find that these two baths alternate constantly between the top two of the thermal baths in Budapest. They are both fully coed. People typically say that Gellert is more beautiful, and Szechenyi is the biggest (but not by much). The Gellert Baths were beautiful. There was an indoor swimming pool, an outdoor swimming pool, five thermal pools indoors and one outdoors. There was also two freezing cold “baths” inside, two steam rooms inside, and a sauna outside. For almost four hours we enjoyed every single pool/bath we could. It is a crazy awesome feeling to go from something really hot to something really cold. The pools ranged from 14 degrees Celsius (57 F) to 40 degrees C (104 F).

After leaving the baths we walked to the top of Gellert Hill to get a beautiful view of the Buda side of the city, and to see the last remaining Communist structure in the city in its original place. (All of the others have been moved to one area, Memento Park, which unfortunately we ran out of time and didn’t get to see). After walking back down the Hill we headed to the Central Market Hall to grab some more traditional Hungarian food and complete our Christmas shopping. Feliks and I agreed this is the second best market we’ve been to, topped only by Pike’s Place in Seattle, Washington. This market covers three stories indoors, and is organized by floor. The basement is where you can find some great kitchen utensils, the ground floor is where the meats, cheeses, fruits, peppers, etc can be found, and the top floor is split between the souvenirs and local-made textiles and traditional food stands. We had some seriously good food here. We split everything so we could try more things. 

Our time here consisted of: 

1. Cabbage rolls filled with rice and pork, served with fried cabbage and fresh bread

2. Hungarian goulash soup - whatever the spices in this thing were, it was amazing

3. Langos, which is a fried piece of dough topped with whatever you want; we got a dessert one and topped it with powdered sugar and caramel

I wish I could have gotten one of everything at the market. Hungarian food is consistently voted in the top three cuisines worldwide, but it’s also almost always voted the unhealthiest! Fun fact: their national spice is paprika.

After the market, we had a big night in store. One thing I’ve always wanted to do, especially in another country, is go to an opera. Usually, it is too costly and I do not have proper attire to be able to go. Lucky for us, the Budapest Opera House does not have a dress code and has super cheap tickets. We bought two tickets in one of the balcony suites for only $6.40 total. So we had a fun time experiencing something we’ve never experienced before, spending a night in Hungary seeing the Italian opera La Boheme.

Our third and final day in Budapest was actually when we did most of our sightseeing. Our first stop was a little over an hour walk to Hero’s Square, a big square full of lots of statues. Right behind this is this really cool area as well that has the biggest ice skating rink I’ve ever seen. We next walked through a pretty park and past the Szechenyi Baths, then took a train down to the Chain Bridge. Before crossing the train bridge we saw a really neat memorial called Shoes on the Danube, and got a great view of their Parliament building. The Chain Bridge, which gets its name from an investor and actually has not a single chain on it and never has, was the first bridge to connect the Buda and Pest sides over the Danube. After we crossed the Chain Bridge we walked up to Fisherman’s Bastion, which housed a beautiful church with a colorful roof and some really great places to take photos of the city.

Our last stop in Budapest was a big stand out. Most people know Budapest because of its thermal baths; the second most popular thing there would be the ruin pubs, cheap bars that started in derelict buildings and unused outdoor spaces and are now world-famous beautifully chaotic icons for the city. Multiple people recommended that we go to Szimpla, and so we did. This place was awesome. We went for a drink but mainly to walk around and check out the decor. Everything is perfectly mix-matched. There are some regular chairs, some really old ones, and some made completely out of tires. Outside there’s even a car split in half where you can sit in both sides of it. Each room inside has its own theme, and we sat in the coolest one. Feliks found a control board on the wall since we noticed so many wires everywhere. There was probably ten different buttons that you could click and something would happen in the room. Sometimes the TV screens would show something different, or an eerie siren would go off. Sometimes a rocket would fly around or monkeys would make noise. This place is something you just have to see yourself.