On July 2nd, after having spent the day in Dubai, Ray and I headed to the airport to start our journey to our next destination: Budapest, Hungary.
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| Look how steamy it was in the plane, when the outside heat of Dubai mixed with the air-conditioning of the airplane. |
The Hungarian Parliament building was right there, across the Danube river from us, on the Pest side of the city. Oh yeah, Budapest used to be two separate cities, Buda and Pest.
A tour guide later told us the advantages of living on the Pest side were that that is where the more active nightlife was, and you get the beautiful view of Buda, where the hills were.
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| The Buda side of Budapest |
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| Buda |
| Our very first view of Budapest |
So we’re on a walkway by the Danube, and Ray and I are just having one of those moments of being giddy and giggling because we loved it so much, we were just so happy. The beauty of everything around us just made it feel like a super surreal, joyful moment.
We decided that we were going to buy a pass for a 2-day hop-on hop-off bus company. We bought our tickets from an employee next to the water, and walked back to the Batthyany square right next to our apartment to wait for our bus. And wait, and wait….but at least we had a view of this beautiful church, the Saint Anna church, while we were waiting, and even got to enjoy the bells ringing.
After waiting for far too long we found out, from a cute Hungarian working for a DIFFERENT bus tour, that the route that day had changed, so there would be no buses coming to that stop. We therefore started walking along the river in search of the next bus stop.
I’ll admit right now, during all our travels we saw so many beautiful things, and I was taking pictures of everything, so lots of the images I’m including on here, I’m not even really sure of what they are. Like this cute square/statue/building.
We crossed the Margaret Bridge, never tiring of the view of the Hungarian Parliament, and came to the entrance of the Margaret Island. We spent about an hour on the island, walking around and exploring the nature. There are medieval ruins, a sports complex and other things that we didn’t see while we were there, but there was also a musical fountain and little open-air cafes that we did see.
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| One of the two railway stations in Budapest |
We continued our walk, taking in the sites of Budapest.
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| A cell in the basement of the House of Terror |
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| Pictures of victims during the Communist rule in Hungary |
There was also a beer fest going on right next to the square, and we had to partake in the festivities!
When we left the restaurant where we were having dinner, we had another magical moment, the Hungarian Parliament all lit up at night! It was just magical!
Our last stop of the night was a little Belgian beer bar down the street from our place. We met such a nice bartender there who had us try another Hungarian specialty- palinka! It comes in all kinds of different fruity flavors, so we tried peach and blueberry. And it was….strong. Kind of a Hungarian moonshine. But at least we can say we tried it. Once. Once was enough.
