Day Trip to Budapest from Vienna

Friday, 18th January 2015

 It's day 3 of our trip. The plan was to go to Budapest, since it's only about 2.5 hours from Vienna.

Since there were 4 of us, we rented a car instead of the usual way to travel in Europe - the Euro Rail. And of course, having a day at our hands, we didn't want to spend most of our time depending on the rail time. We intended to leave early, but had car issues got a little delayed. Towards the border, there were wind mill farms in Austria.

We took our passports etc, because we are traveling between countries, but it turns out, that between the EU countries, there wasn't really a border control. I thought that was pretty cool! You could see where you were entering into the new country; they had check posts, but no physical people to cross check documents etc. There was a little service station sort of an area right there. Now we had figured out, that even though Hungary was part of the EU nations, Euro was scarcely used. It was Hungarian Forints (HUF) that was the main currency. So we got some dollars exchanged. Word of caution for the wise - do the currency exchange prior to entering Hungary, not at the border, it was a tad bit expensive.

We hadn't even had breakfast yet, so we tried to hunt for some food in the restaurant/convenience store inside the service area. In Vienna, we didn't have trouble communicating with anyone. Most people responded in English. We could also figure out some signs in German and some words we could make out because they were somewhat similar to English. At the service area, not one soul spoke a word of English. And to top it off, Hungarian was not close to any language we knew! We couldn't figure out if the food the poor lady was selling was vegetarian or not! So of course we left, and came across a McDonald's half an hour or so later.The siblings were happy to have an "Americano" coffee :). We got some muffins and croissants there, and then continued our drive towards Hungary.

Now both the highways we took in Austria and Hungary are allowed a legal speed of 130 kmph, and cars were flashing at us and zooming past us, because us North Americans were super cautious at 130 kmph. We could feel that the country in general was poorer compared to Austria, but the countryside was nonetheless very pretty.

We reached Budapest around 1 pm. Divided by the Danube river are the once twin cities of Buda and Pest, occupying the west and the east banks of the river respectively. Our first stop was the majestic Buda Castle Hill. It was pretty much a small town inside of the castle. The first place we visited was none other than the bakery! Oh well, we didn't eat any of the yummy looking desserts here just yet. The plan was the come back and try them once we had burned some calories walking around =). The cobble-stone roads had an oldish charm, so did the buildings, and stores around.

We took a tour of the labyrinth inside the castle. The cave was lit up, and had mannequins that displayed Hungarian theater clothes. It also displayed an exhibition of pictures of few other well known caves in the world. There was a small section of the cave that was pitch dark, where you could walk and let your senses guide you. They had some spooky areas where there was somebody's coffins. They also did executions in the cave at some point in history. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the labyrinth, but this one is at the very entrance of the cave.

Afterwards, we walked past a pet store, an apothecary, on our way towards Mathias Church. The structure of the church was pretty spectacular from the outside. You can take a look for yourself.

Right across from there was the Fisherman's Bastion. It was home to some magnificent towers, which also exercised as lookout points for tourists. Probably in the past these were critical for maintaining the security of the castle.

The view of the Danube, and then right across from there, the Hungarian Parliament was breathtaking.

This picture below shows the Chain bridge - one of the two popular bridges in Budapest. Further in the picture, the dome shaped structure that is visible is the Hungarian Parliament. 

Budapest was definitely a beautiful city, and I couldn't have felt gladder about visiting it, than from those lookout towers. After finishing the quota of pictures in that spot, we started to walk to the other side of the Castle. There was a changing of the guards ceremony in front of the Hungarian Presidential palace that we were lucky of have encountered.

Being out in the cold for so long, it began getting to us, and just in time for us to have spotted a hot chocolate stall.

We walked around the actual Buda Castle, and got a view of the Citadel as well. The high walls of the castle made us realize the importance of castles.

You could easily spend an entire day at the Buda Castle. The best part was that roaming around the streets and courts and the creepy looking courtyards was free! We only paid for the labyrinth tour. Here's a few other cool shots of the breathtaking castle.

There was also an area in the castle where you could practice archery

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We left the Castle to find food. It was past lunch time, and we hunted down an Indian place :D! And boy did we gobble!!! Well, it certainly was fun paying 10,000 of a currency's units for lunch :)! The sky caught on the shades of the evening by the time we were done. The satisfied travelers' next destination was the Hungarian Parliament, which has quite some accolades to its name. It is currently the largest building in Hungary, highest building in Budapest, the third largest Parliament in the world, and one of Europe's oldest legislative buildings. That's quite something, don't you think? The grandeur of the building just shows, be it from across the river, or right in front of it.

If you are wondering how the castle looks from the Pest side, I can assure you, it is truly gorgeous. Here's a few shots that we captured in the night.

Such a beauty - the whole castle skyline, isn't it? Here's a Mathias Church in all its glory from across the Danube. 

We walked to the St. Stephen's Basilica from the Parliament. Here's what the church looks like, from inside and out. The heart just melts at the thought of so much beauty.

Guess who got hungry again after all the walking? Yes, you got that one right. And of course, we weren't gonna leave Hungary without getting a taste of all the desserts we had read up on before getting here. So we drove off to what seemed like a happening part of the town, hoping that one of those restaurants/bakeries/pubs would be serving the traditional Hungarian desserts. But we got a big fat Zilch. One of the restaurant's server was kind enough to call up a couple of bakeries for us who would be open that late, and confirmed that they carried the pastries we wanted to try out. Then, off we drove to the part of town close to the Basilica to a high end bakery called Gerbaude. We finally had the pleasure of trying out the Hungarian desserts. And we absolutely loved them over the overrated Sacher Torte from Vienna.

This is the Somlói Galuska - sponge cake balls and whipped cream and chocolate.

And this is the winner of all pastries we had in our trip - Dobos Torte or Dobosh, which is a layered Hungarian sponge cake. It was yummyness galore.

The Bakery was on a square opposite the Fashion Street of Budapest. It was almost 11, so we took a quick stroll on the Fashion Street before grabbing a cup of coffee for our two and a half hour drive back into Austria.

As we drove out of Budapest via the Chain Bridge, my last thoughts about the city was that it was rightfully called the "Paris of the East". I thought it was extremely cool to be able to drive up to another country for a day trip. And not just any other city in another country, another enchanting dear old city called Budapest. I would visit this place all over again some day.

Trip to Vienna - Day 1

Friday, 16th January 2015

Whenever me and my husband visit our families back home, we try to take a short stop over on our way there or back. Short is about 3-4 days. This time on our way back from India, we planned our little stop over in Vienna, and I am so glad we chose Vienna. You`ll see why :)!

Apart from visiting a place, my second favorite part of the whole process is researching about the place, checking out maps, reviews, planning itineraries, the whole nine yards. It`s so much fun! I wouldn't mind doing that for a living, you know. May be one day I'll post about my process, which I am sure is not a whole lot different from most people out there, but that's a story for another day.

So anyway, we land in Vienna super early in the morning, go to drop off our luggage so we can have minimal stuff with us. But as luck would have it, the computer systems were broken, and they would not accept any luggage at all. So we took a cab, hauled all our luggage, and went to our temporary abode for 4 days. The place we chose was in Central Vienna, where all the action happens. We got a relatively early check-in, for a slight cost, which wasn't bad considering we were dirty and tired from all the traveling. We had breakfast in a cafe called Anker Snacks &Coffee. Thanks to our cab driver, we knew that the Austrian way to have a coffee is to get a Cafe Melange, so we ordered that. It is essentially a shot of espresso mixed with steamed milk and topped with foam. It was not very strong coffee. I especially liked the fact that since the milk was warm, the coffee didn't get cold as soon as it was handed over - a problem I generally encounter with my Tim Hortons cream-and-sugar coffee :).

We rested for sometime and started our planned itinerary sometime late afternoon. The temperature was about 2-3 degrees Celsius, and we had planned to walk. So we bundled up and started walking towards our first stop of the day - Museum of Fake Art or Faelscher Museum, as it was called. The museum was a huge disappointment - there were not enough artifacts, and it was rather uninteresting. It would have made sense for it to be a small section of some other art museum. Right across from the museum is the Hundertwasser House.

It was a one of a kind architecture of a building; the house was colorful and vibrant and gave a very friendly vibe. It felt like the building was a true artist's canvas, a player's playground. There were domes and triangles and curves and angles everywhere, uneven floors and bricks and mosaic and arches and colors, all made the building very unique and playful. We walked around the building, the only part of the building that we could see from the inside was a small cafe called Kunst und Cafe at one end of the building. The cafe was pretty quaint and bright. They had a short free documentary film of Hundertwasser playing inside it, which visitors were welcome to watch.

There was also a Hundertwasser Village very close to the Hundertwasser House. That was our next stop on the itinerary.The village is a collection of shops, all selling souvenirs, arts and crafts of Vienna. It was also inspired by Hundertwasser style of architecture. We had fun exploring the colorful village.

By this time we were pretty amazed by the works of Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and the obvious next stop was the museum that displayed his art work - KunstHaus Wien. The building was a short walk from the Hunderterwasser Village, and was also designed by none other than Hundertwasser :)! We were inspired by this guy so we couldn't leave without seeing what kind of creative juices he had flowing. We checked out the permanent exhibition of the museum, which was his work. All in all, I believe he was a true artist, and I absolutely loved the vibrancy in his work, and the use of bright colors. He apparently didn't like straight lines, and that was demonstrated very well in his work. There were also a few models of other buildings and architecture he did, and I was would accredit him for his architecture more than his art, but that's a personal opinion.

After soaking in the glory of Hundertwasser's works, we decided to take a stroll down the Danube canal, that flows very close to this area of Vienna. We followed the Danube canal to Schwedenplatz, were we started seeing more life in the city. There was a hotel building across from the Danube that had some sort of a fancy light show going on it. All the bridges across Danube canal were pretty and lit up.

We grabbed dinner at a middle eastern restaurant Sababa. The food was decent and enough to satisfy our appetites after a long day of walking. Before dinner, we had seen a cafe that had some very eye catching desserts, so after dinner we were sure to catch dessert there. The place was called Gelataria Castelletto. Oh the guilty pleasures of the sweet tooth, we ended up ordering 4 different desserts!! The first two were the traditional Viennese desserts of Sacher Torte and some chocolate-covered-puff-balls-filled-with-creme-dessert-whose-name-I-forget.The puff balls, whose name I am so sad to have forgotten, were delicious!

We had extremely high expectations of the Sacher Torte because we had read so much about it, but it didn't do justice to our expectations. The cake felt dry, and the jam wasn't adding to the flavor in a good way. The top layer of chocolate was pretty tasty, though. We thought, may be, we have to try it from the "Hotel Sacher", from where the original Sacher Torte came to be, so that comes later.

After being let down by Sacher Torte, we settled on a mousse cake and some vanilla gelato. We didn't go wrong with these choices.

This was the end of our itinerary for day one. I thoroughly enjoyed walking in this pretty city. Every single building that we walked across was a treat for the eyes. You could feel the richness and the history of this city in its buildings. I was looking forward to the rest of the days in Vienna!