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| Chain Bridge |
Last Tuesday, we took off for Budapest, Hungary, about a 4-5 hour drive from Rijeka. Our hotel was actually an apartment in the heart of Pest, which was in a very Jewish part of town (lots of synagogues, kosher restaurants, Hebrew lettering). Amazingly, our GPS guided us right to the apartment, and we tucked our car away in the underground garage and walked/took public transporation the entire rest of the time.
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| At the strudel table |
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| Goulash soup |
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| Farger Kave |
We started out by walking to the "Metro Center" of Budapest, called Deak Ferenc Ter, and bought Budapest 48 hour card, which entitled us to ride all public transportation (trams, metro, and buses) free. At the time, the kids were starving to death, but we had left the list of recommended restaurants given to me by our friends Paul and Paula (who lived in pest for a semester) in the apartment. I remembered that one of them was on 6. October Street, so we headed that way and walked by the Basilica and before the kids died of starvation, we settled on House of Strudel. It was there that I learned that my kids like goulash soup (in Hungary, goulash is never a stew, it's always soup). I also had a delicious cabbage strudel. Later that night, I saw that the House of Strudel was one of the places Paula had recommended, so we got very lucky. We took a tram to the Parlament building, one of the largest and fanciest government buildings I've ever seen, and walked back to the apartment. We stopped at a coffee shop and the kids got to feed the turtles, and a waiter took a liking to Jonah (it was mutual). In the picture, note the plaid hat. My son, who normally wouldn't be caught dead wearing plaid, chose this hat from H&M, where we stopped to pick up some clothing staples for the kids, since we have no Target in Croatia. What was striking to us was how polished and updated all the gorgeous Hapsburgian buildings seemed to be, and how thoroughly even the tiniest streets were labelled, compared to Rijeka.
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| Parlament |
The next day, we took a 10:00AM tour of several rooms in the Parlament building -- there are almost 700 rooms in all. This is the third largest parliament building in the world. It seems massive for such a small country, but when it was built, Hungary was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the area it governed was much larger. It's located in Pest to balance out the dominance of the Royal Palace on the Buda side.
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| Szechenyi Baths |
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| Szchenyi Baths |
After the tour, we crossed the Chain Bridge and saw some great views of Pest from the castle district. We walked back to the apartment to get our swimming gear and took the metro to the famous Szechenyi Thermal Baths. We got our wristbands, which looked like blue plastic watches with no numbers, then separated into the boys and girls lines. We found the lockers, changed, and used the wristband thing to push a small circle down on the locker, which locked it (and later, would unlock it). We walked through a labyrinth of hallways filled with small cabinets and lockers, and perhaps 100 miscellaneous doors, looking for the outdoor pools. Some of the areas we passed through had large hottubs which smelled slightly sulfurous, some rooms we passed were for massages, but eventually around a corner, we found the door that led to a huge courtyard with three huge pools. The building around the courtyard is extremely ornate, yellow and very expansive, and there were statues and fountains... it was just gorgeous. Because we were in our suits, and it was "only" about 60 degrees outside. we hopped into the first pool, which turned out to be the warm pool. We were not allowed in the cooler lap pool without swimming caps, but we darted to the farthest away "hot" pool, which had the temperature of a hottub. There were several chessboards set up, but mostly people were just sitting on the steps because, like a hottub, you can't stay in very long before you overheat. We went back to the warm pool and stayed there until it was time to leave. We took our swimming gear back to the hotel and then went out for dinner (which was less remarkable), and got the kids to bed way past their bedtime.
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| House of Art Nouveau |
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| Dohany Synagogue |
On our last day, we went back up to the castle district in Buda to find a medieval synagogue, but it was closed. We headed back to Pest to see the House of Hungarian Art Nouveau, sort of a museum/flea market for art nouveau furniture, then we walked back to the House of Strudel for our last lunch. We picked up some souvenirs on the Vaci Utca, the main tourist drag, then toured the Dohany Synagogue, the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world. The synagogue was in the neighborhood of our apartment, and we had to be back by 2PM to get our car out. We got into our car, which was already loaded up, and drove out of Pest, enjoying takeout poppyseed, prune, and sour cherry strudels from the House of Strudel on the way to Debrecen.
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| Jonah's sister |
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| Outside Parlament |
