Hungary for Thanksgiving

Well… it wasn’t exactly Thanksgiving.  David and I really wanted a home-cooked meal on Turkey Day, so we headed to Budapest the weekend before instead.  That way, we could spend Thursday with Karen cooking and eating a traditional dinner.

Budapest is part of the Hapsburg triumvirate – three cities ruled by the Hapsburg dynasty.  Since we had recently visited the other two, Vienna and Prague, we decided to check out Budapest too.

While it wasn’t our favorite (Prague wins the top spot in our book), Budapest was still really fun.  It’s more of a big city, like Vienna, and since we were only there for three days, we booked a city bus tour on Saturday to see all of the highlights.

On Friday after we flew in, we walked to Vaci Utca, a popular pedestrian street. 

We window-shopped and had lunch at Café Gerbeaud.  This is the most famous coffeehouse in Budapest and serves amazing desserts.  The hot chocolate was so thick, it was like pudding.  I think out of all European foods, I will miss the hot chocolate most when we move back.  They don’t have warm chocolate pudding over here, but the hot chocolate more than makes up for it!

David's layered caramel latte

We then walked all the way down Vaci Utca to Central Market.  This marketplace has everything!  The bottom level is mainly produce, meats, and delicacies while the top floor houses souvenir stands and cafes. 

Eating a cherry strudel from one of the stands

The original Central Market

Then we walked across Liberty Bridge to check out the Gellert Baths.

Budapest is known as the “City of Spas” because there are 80 hot springs running through it.  The Romans built up the town around their baths just as they did in England.  The Gellert Hotel has a great spa and bath complex, but because the Turks occupied Budapest for so long, the traditional baths are like Turkish baths.  I wasn’t going through that again, so David and I played it safe and booked treatments in the comfort of our hotel’s spa instead.

No more Turkish baths for us, thanks!

After turning down the baths, we walked through the Jewish quarter back to our hotel.  70,000 Jews were kept in the ghetto surrounding the Great Synagogue during WWII.  20,000 were killed and around the city, there are memorials dedicated to the victims.  The synagogue is massive and holds the title of largest in Europe. 
   

That evening we had dinner at M.  We had heard good things from our friends and Timeout magazine, so we booked a table.  We were glad we had, because it was really crowded on Friday night.  It was a neat little restaurant that served traditional Hungarian dishes.  David and I both had the potato soup to start, and then I had the chicken goulash with homemade noodles while David ordered the boeuf bourguignon.  For dessert, we split the quince strudel.  The portions were enormous for the price we paid… we need to start splitting meals more often!    

We spent Saturday morning before our city tour at the hotel spa.  The Corinthia has a beautiful indoor pool bordered by a couple of jacuzzis, steam rooms, and saunas.  We tried out everything, and then ordered lunch before being picked up for our tour.

Taken from the hotel website, this is the indoor pool at the Corinthia

First stop was the Parliament building.  This is one of the largest Parliament buildings in the world, modeled after Great Britain’s on the outside.  Visitors are only allowed inside as part of a tour, and they sell out fast, so we were glad we had secured our spot weeks ago. 

Ready for our tour!

The crown jewels being guarded

The House of Lords, no longer in use today

Apparently it's really difficult to change the lightbulbs in that 

chandelier so they never turn the lights on 100%

Entrance Hall

Then we drove to Heroes’ Square, containing the Millennium Monument from 1896.

After that we headed down Andrassy Street past St. Stephen’s Basilica.

The hand of St. Stephen, 

the first Hungarian king to establish Christianity in the country

Budapest was originally two separate towns – Buda, a hilly residential area in the west and Pest, the densely populated city center on the east side of the Danube.  Chain Bridge was the first permanent bridge across the river, but during WWII all bridges were destroyed and had to be rebuilt.  We drove across Chain Bridge up to the castle in Buda.

We got off of the bus to walk around Matyas Church, a 13^th century church that was the scene of Hungarian coronations and royal burials.  

Next to the church is Fishermen’s Bastion, a really nice monument to Budapest’s Fishermen’s Guild.  It offered some amazing views of the city at dusk.

View of Parliament from the Danube

Our final stop was the Citadel to get a great panoramic shot of Budapest lit up at night.

There were only two other English speakers on the tour, an American couple currently living abroad.  After the tour, the four of us went to the Christmas market in Budapest’s main square, Vorosmarty.  Usually the markets kick off a bit later, but they opened in early November this year!  Great news for us!   

The sausage with spicy mustard and stuffed cabbage were so yummy!

Giant pretzels - delicious!

This is not in the Christmas spirit!  

These Murder posters with the creepy clown were 

plastered EVERYWHERE around the city.

David is saying, "Murder?  Murder me?!"

Sunday was our day of relaxation.  We spent all morning in the spa and then had a couple’s massage (told you I’m hooked now)!  The receptionist recommended a man for me and a woman for David, which at first I thought would be totally awkward, but it ended up being fine after about 5 minutes.  Our eyes were closed the whole time anyway so it’s not like we were sneaking funny faces at each other.

We had lunch at Callas next to the Opera House.  This café was delicious!  Best meal of the trip!  I had veal medallions in paprika gravy with bacon wrapped cheese curds, while David had wiener schnitzel.  Obviously mine was better.

And to end our day of relaxation, we flew first class back to London.  Never, ever, ever would I waste money on a first class ticket but when we booked our flights on the British Airways website, the return flight was completely sold out.  (We have been procrastinating like whoa with our travel plans lately, so this was a big wakeup call for us!)  We checked out Expedia and Cheaptickets and some other travel websites and it turned out the return tickets in coach were the same price as the only first class tickets remaining at BA.com.  So we decided if we’re going to pay the same amount, we’d might as well take the better seating option! It was better seats and a much better meal, but overall not that big of a deal for a short 2 hour flight back home.  

Like at the end of all of our trips, we didn’t want to go back to the real world, but at least we have Turkey Day to look forward to this week!  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!