Along the Danube

Wow, time goes fast all of a sudden! We almost spent a week in Budapest and we are half way our holiday, but it feels like we are almost going home! Cause we still want to see a lot, we needed to plan ahead and see what is possible. And then things go really fast. But let's look back first.

After our great time at Bogdan's family it was time to visit some sights close by. We went to see two other towns next to the Danube. Visegrád is just half an hour away and has a really old and medieval look and feel. Especially feel, since there were all kinds of knights surrounding us; one with a falcon, two dressed up on horses and fighting eachother with large swords and there was a whole gladiator show with drums you could hear from the fortress above the town. This was all meant for some schoolclasses having a tour here...but we enjoyed it too! Of course we stretched our legs again and walked up to the fortress, which was actually quite a steep path. Luckily we are trained well. The fortress was nice, there was even a horse where you could ride on, a wax museum with puppets in clothes from that era and we could have even shot some arrows. Really cool how they make it more lively like this. But the view was really magnificent. Really beautiful to see the Danube meander through the super green hills full of trees and some hills with cute houses with orange roofs. After that we headed to Esztergom, a bigger town famous for it's huge basilica, where the first king was born (St Stephen) so being the royal seat for ages and also the seat for Catholicism for over 1000 years. And what a great and beautiful basilik this is. So huge, especially in comparison to all the small churches we'ver seen a lot here. The crypt was awfully cold, because of the 17th meter deep walls. The treasury room was amazing with all the golden and precious stone ornamented church accessories, including lots of vestments of the priests, all so richly decorated. Unfortunately no pictures allowed here either. There were some really "Sinterklaas" look a like vestments and accessories too. Exercised enough from the fortress, we could handle the 400 steps leading to the cupola too. When we arrived through some really dazzling small spiral stairs, we arrived at the round roof where the echo was brilliant. Really funny to try out some stuff there (luckily no one else there). The view from here was amazing of course, but so it was anywhere else we went in Esztergom. From the place where we had a drink, from the brigdge zo Slovakia, from the chique restaurant where we had a great lunch. That didn't even costed much at all! While we were in the beautiful cellars under the basilica, so normally those place are the most expensive. For dinner we thought it was fun to have that in Slovakia (4th country, check!). We went for a restaurant in cheesy knight-look; big wooden chairs and tables, weapons and torture devices showed and some gigantic plates with knifes sticked in meat. It was very expensive in comparison to the prices in Hungary, but since the prices were in euro and it was not expensive in comparison to the meals we had before arriving to Hungary. So well, let's just go for it; the rest looked quite depressing actually. We got some water with lemon to wash our hands and napkins put around our neck, so we were ready for some great medieval meal. I guess it was comparible actually...but not in a good way. First of all, I got the wrong dish with gooseliver instead of prune, cheese and ham as filling for my meat, iiieeewww!!! My neighbour was eating my dish (our dishes were switched) and kept enjoying it, and although the waitress was clearly hoping I would do the same, I asked for a new plate. This was really disg....not my taste! And apparently that took so long that I needed to wait till Bogdan was completely finished with his meal before I got my piece of meat. Not too cosy. The meal was nothing special either. And we couldn't pay by card and from Hungarian forinths she didn't have anything back (and we were not planning to give a tip!). So yeah...this was not a great experience to end our really nice day in Hungary. Luckily we could cross the border really easy again by taking the bridge and with a sky filled with all kinds of beautiful pastel colours. And the Esztergom basilica lighted in the darkening sky high above us. Travelling back in the dark on little local and bending roads was quite a challenge, especially because of all the drivers on the other side using their flashlight constantly and the fact that directions are given mostly at the moment you need to change lanes (like in Belgium); but we made it back safely to Budapest!

The next day (Friday) we were into some more relaxation and we had to figure out what to see in Hungary the rest of the time left. Bogdán had to change one of the t-shirts he got and I took the opportunity to have a little bit of shopping (yaay). I bought some nice sneakers and a cute dress within half an hour or something and man, that made me happy! We had a quick lunch with some nice bakery stuff, cause a friend of Bogdán would step by and pick up the skateboard we brought for him from Rotterdam (a collectors item). It was nice to meet him finally and we are invited to have dinner at his place, so hopefully we can make that happen. Because there was some bad wheather forecast for the upcoming week we checked the best possibilities for our destinations, with both the forecasts and our Lonely Planet. We want to see the famous Puszta, the mountain area around Eger in the northeast and the vineyards and mediteranean city Pécs in the south. And of course the Habsburger palace in Gödölő nearby Budapest; it was the favourite summer palace of Sissi. After doing all the research in the sudden heat (it was defenitely more then 30 degrees) in Budapest we had a small siësta and a late diner with delicious beangoulash and lemonade. Great to be in shirt and shorts in the late evening!

I will make another post with our activities in the weekend. On our way to to the Outback/Wild West/Puszta now. Szia!