Buda and Pest

Yesterday we went around Budapest with a local guide in the free (or tips based) walking tour that we signed up online. The walk started in St. Stephen’s Basilica which was a 18-minute or so walk from our hotel. We walked along the Danube River to get to the Basilica where the walk started at 11 am. The tour snaked around the capital city where the tour ended at around 1 pm in the Parliament building.

The walking was enjoyable and possibly the best way to discover a city. We tried our first walking tour in Copenhagen and tried to do the same we visit a place. We did the same on our visit to Boston and Chicago. The tour was on the Pest side of the city and took a bus to Buda side, getting off the stairs below Fisherman’s Bastion at the height of the castle district. Before going to the other side of the river, we had an exorbitantly price lunch in a lunch in a Christmas Market.

We did not realize the cost because there was no screen register to see the amount plus the difficulty of calculating the exchange rate. Only later after eating our lunch we realized we paid about $70 dollars for a meal of Kielbasa sausage, fried rice, sauerkraut, pickles and beer. Our friend paid a similar amount for Pork knuckles, curry chicken and vegetables and fried rice. It would have been best to go into a formal Hungarian restaurant than eating street food in a Christmas Market while watching the interesting people around.  

The view from the castle district from the heights of Buda was spectacular, seeing the Pest side across the river with the magnificent building like the Parliament. We spent time taking pictures and enjoying the view though we did not have time to go to the Palace nor Mattias Church as there were many people and we still felt bad for overspending on our lunch; not having the common sense to calculate the cost. Nevertheless, the rest of the afternoon was fun walking in the Castle District and talking the tram and bus to move around the city.

Evening came early with the night settled into the city at around 4 pm. We went back to Pest and walked around to enjoy the festivity of Christmas Market and ate Chimney Cake apple pie and whip cream and went into a coffee shop to have coffee while checking our smart phones and talked about plans for the next day. We walked back to our hotel, tired from the day’s events. I watched YouTube videos on Budapest and enjoyed watching a French detective show at the same time.