2011.07.11 – Vienna (AT) – Budapest (HG)
Although we wished we could have slept in this morning we had to catch the hotel’s breakfast before 10am and in addition we wanted to visit the large Schönbrunn park nearby our hotel. When we made it down to the hotel courtyard for breakfast, we were again the only folks to show up. The hotel looked simply deserted. After wrapping up our packing, we brought our luggage from our third floor room to the reception desk. When came the time to pay, Jenny and I both held our breath hoping there were no mistakes about the cost of our stay in this deluxe suite. There was no surprise – we paid the amount indicated in our booking. We walked 10 minutes to the Schönbrunn park. The park was huge as it was the home to Vienna’s zoo. We wandered the park and stopped at a enclosed area with mazes and labyrinths. We had a great time there. We walked back to our hotel to take a taxi to the Westbanhof train station. Upon our arrival, Jessica and Jenny headed out to find a post office in order for Jessica to mail out her work contract she had received by email in Salzbourg. We were surprised to note that our train was delayed by one hour. We ate some Chinese fast food in “a box” for lunch at the train station. Our first class seats on our train to Budapest were very spacious and comfortable. Once we got off the train in Budapest, we took a bit of time to locate the ticket office to make reservations for our Prague segment. We had to queue for 1.5h before we could speak to agent about our reservation request. Thankfully we were able to have a seat given that we had our service ticket in hands. We were relieved after making our reservation for July 13th as we were not sure that we would want to stay any longer in Budapest as the train station looked quite run down – and low tech. With our train tickets secured, we stopped at an ATM across the road to withdraw funds in the local currency – foriant. We took a taxi after confirming a fixed price for the distance to our hotel. The old taxi driver had a bit of difficulty finding our hotel. We finally helped him out with our Google map saved on our Kindle. At the hotel, we were pleasantly surprised by the very nice reception desk. We were even more pleased when we opened our hotel/apartment room, everyone again went wild as the place clearly outperformed even our deluxe hotel in Vienna. The apartment had two beautiful rooms, a large balcony and a ready-to-use kitchen including a clothes washing machine, a dish washer and as a bonus the breakfast was included. After settling in, we headed out by foot for a 20 minutes walk to a pedestrian street lined with restaurants. The streets were fairly quiet and relatively cool – as Budapest had recently experienced one of its warmest days in 20 years.
2011.07.12 – Budapest (HG)
We had a great night sleep in our plush beds. After purchasing some soap, we took advantage of the clothes washing machine. We struggled a bit with the machine but we finally managed to wrap up before breakfast. We enjoyed the hotel’s courtesy breakfast on the 1st level outdoor terrace. We felt a bit disorganized today as we had not done too much research regarding the tourist sites in town. We started our day by purchasing 24h bus/metro passes. We then headed out to the downtown area of Pest. Later we crossed the Chain bridge to the Buda side of Budapest where it was a lot more hilly. We took a funicular up to Castle Hill where we visited St-Mateus church and the Fisherman Bastion. We tried some ice cream but were disappointed by the small portions served compared to our Italian gelato experience. After taking a few rests, we took the subway to the Pest side where we visited the park near the Heroe’s monument. We enjoyed the Art on the Lake exhibition on the man-made pound. Jenny, Jessica and Victoria rented a rowing boat for 30 minutes. We continued our visit of the park and returned to the downtown area of Pest. We boarded an hour long cruise on the Danube which was not blue – unless you had a few glasses of wine like Strauss. We walked on the fashion street on our way to yesterday’s restaurant area. We were happy to return to our deluxe apartment.
