Budapest, Hungary

Although a number of weeks have passed since we were there, we thought we would update our news with our little weekend jaunt to Budapest. It was a relaxing weekend for a change as there wasn’t heaps to see but it was a lovely city.

We had a horrid flight over as the fog was so thick that we could only see the run way about 20 metres (or 3 seconds) before landing. The fog stayed for the whole weekend which surprisingly made it very cold. It was really our first cold snap of which we have had heaps since.

Budapest is divided into two parts; Buda on one side of the river and Pest on the other. We stayed in Pest and wandered over to Buda on the Saturday. Buda is on a large hill that we climbed to see Hungary’s Statue of Liberty which was quite impressive. We then wandered through the richly coloured autumn leaves before arriving in the old town. The palace looked beautiful but the highlight up on the hill was the goulash soup in a funky café that had 5 pages of dessert and only 2 of main meals. We also enjoyed visiting a very traditional Hungarian market where Chris had a beer and a deep fried bread type thing for about £1.50. Bargain! We enjoyed a great dinner before retiring to our overheated 1960’s style apartment.

On the Sunday, we visited the main park where part of it had been covered for ice-skating. There were so many families with their ice skates having a great time on the ice. We then visited the Hungarian History Museum where we were immersed in the volatile history of Hungary. The World War 2 information was amazing. Hungary only came out of communist rule in 1991 so there are definitely signs of the regime still around. We saw photographs from 1944 of the main bridge that connects Buda and Pest totally destroyed from WWII bombings. Incredible stuff. You can see plenty of photos in the Chris-style “night shots” on the photo site http://photos.yahoo.com/csmoyle.

So in summary, Budapest was a great little place for a weekend visit. Fine family fun all round!