Danube Extravaganza: Day 1 & 2

 Oh look!  She's at it again!  Krystina's travel alarm kept going off because it was time to hit the road again.  

This trip is my Danube Extravaganza!  Well...except that only two of the cities I'm visiting are on the Danube...I'll admit I didn't look close enough when naming the trip to notice that the river running through Prague is not the Danube, but the Vitava River.  Too late now, because it's been the Danube Extravaganza for too long in my mind.

So why am I visiting Central Europe in the middle of winter?  Because it is the off-season and things are cheaper.  And I heard that these cities were beautiful places to visit no matter the time of year.  I'm not actually sure what hostel prices are in the high season, but I'm paying $45 for 3 nights in Budapest.

I left very early on Valentine's Day because I love myself.  When I booked my flight, I was set to leave Wichita around 11:15 am, but by the time travel day came around, that flight had gotten moved up to 5:30 am.  Yay!  Because I love getting up when the first digit on the clock is a 3!  Not!  I was able to get a Lyft to the airport at 4:15 am, which was a miracle that saved me $120 in parking cost, so I gave my driver a little extra tip because I was excited about saving money by not having to park at the airport.

My flight to Atlanta went off without a hit.  In fact, we got there 15 minutes early, which meant my layover was 7 1/2 hrs instead of just 7 hours.  I walked every terminal of ATL and the walkways in between.  I stopped from time to time along the way.  I read up on the history of Atlanta between Terminals B and C.  Eventually I made it to the international corner where I found a quiet corner to lay down.  I got on my flight to Amsterdam and it turns out I had an empty middle seat!   Yay for flying on a Tuesday in mid-February to Europe!  Anyways...didn't sleep a wink on the plane.  I ended up watching two movies and then trying to sleep, but not succeeding, as my seatmate commented...he was also unsuccessful.  

We arrived in Amsterdam and my next journey was to figure out how to get out of there.  The person at customs person didn't even ask me for my point of visit, which was about 6 hours in the city of Amsterdam (if I should chose to spend all I could allow there).  And then was the fun of figuring out how to catch a train to the city.  That was only an ordeal because somewhere between me purchasing my train ticket and finding the luggage storage place, I lost my ticket, so I had to buy another one.

I got into Amsterdam Centraal some time around 7:20 am, before the sun rose.  One thing I noticed was that Amsterdam seemed to have these weird ramp escalators instead of stair ones.  I soon figured out that was because that way people could go up and down them with bikes.  My plan for my first ever visit to Amsterdam was really to just wander the canals, so that is what I did.  I walked up and around the main canals in the central part of the city for a few hours as the city woke up and started riding their bikes.  There were bikes everywhere, by the way.  There was a 3 story bike parking garage outside the train station.  After a while my body started to slow down, obviously saying to me "24 hours with no sleep is too many.  I need a break."   So i then headed back to the train station, got a pick-me-up hot chocolate and then found the train to get me back to the airport.  

Once at the airport, I picked up my luggage and went through security (which is so much better laid out than the ones at American airports).  After a little wandering, trying to find a place to lay down, I found myself a bed to curl up in.  By which I mean a 2.5' by 2.5' part of a couch, where I soon fell asleep.  Two hours later it was time for me to find my plane to Budapest.  

Yes, I fell asleep here.

On arriving at the airport, I quickly found the line to get on the bus to get me from the airport to the city center.  That bus was nearly an hour of standing.  Research beforehand had said it was a half hour trip, but I think we hit rush hour traffic.  It was a hot, miserable hour full of sudden slamming of breaks and weird turns (I think the driver was using GPS to try to get us into the city quicker, but it took us around a lot of weird streets I don't think he would have normally driven).  After getting off the bus, I found my way to my home for the next few days.  Then I headed to the Tesco down the street to get some food to cook up.  Food first, sleep second.  11 hours of sleep and I felt nicely rested.

I woke up on the 16th (which I guess is technically the 3rd day, but in my head is the 2nd day), showered, and then headed out for the day.  I had a rough agenda for the day that had 3 things on it, but I ended up only making it to one thing on that list.  And that's okay because the philosophy behind this trip was to visit Budapest, Vienna, and Prague, and if I have time, to make a few other stops along the way, but if I don't because I want to stay in another city longer, that is okay too.  

I set off from my hostel to head to Buda Hill where Buda Castle is, along with a number of other sights.  But as I was crossing the Danube, I found this huge hill with a path going up it and a tall statue partway up, and what looked like would have been a fountain/waterfall in warmer weather.  I spent probably an hour exploring that park area, and don't regret it.

St. Gellert up on the side of the hill named after him.

I then made my way over to Buda Castle.  The castle is unique because part of it dates back centuries, while other parts date back to the late 1800s, and some of it is even newer than that because they have rebuilt sections that were devastated during World War II.  Part of the castle now is the National Art Gallery, while another section is about the history of the castle.  There's a whole other section that is used for other things as well.  

The Castle History Museum portion was very interesting.  On the bottom floors you can actually go into areas of the original castle, some of which were only recently discovered when renovating and rebuilding the WWII damage.  The castle doesn't seem very castle-y inside, as in opulent or majestic.  We have the communists to than for that.  After WWII, when they were fixing damage to the outside of the building from the war, they cleared out the interior, leaving it stark and utilitarian.  It is really only in the past 15 years or so that they've started slowly working to bring it back into its more historical grandness.  They've replicated one room top-to-bottom so far.  St. Stephen's Hall, named for the first king of Hungary.  He ruled over 1000 years ago.  They hope to bring other rooms along in the next few years.

St. Stephen's Hall

On the grounds there are also some buildings that are brand new, that are essentially replicas of what was on the grounds pre-WWII bombardment.  That's what all the cranes are in my pictures.  They're rebuilding things there.

This lion is full of patches to cover up bullet holes and shrapnel damage from WWII.

The Riding Hall was rebuilt just recently on the same grounds and to the same specs as the original.

I spent probably about 4 hours in the castle museum and on the actual castle grounds before heading to see the Fisherman's Bastion and Matyas Church still up on Buda Hill, but further along the hill.  The Fisherman's Bastion is a sort of castle-like structure up on the side of the hill, overlooking the Danube and Pest.  It is an amazing view from up there.  You can see the Hungarian Parliament Building really well as it is just right across the river.

Fisherman's Bastion

Matyas Church is right there as well.  The church has a grand roof made of colored ceramic tiles and is so neat.  It is a very fitting roof that matches in the interior of the church as well.  I feel like when I stepped into the church, if you had been looking, you could probably see my jaw drop a bit.  The inside is completely painted up in random patterns.  Every pillar in there had a different design.  The walls were different too.  It was so unique.  Even a back stairwell was painted up.

After leaving the church my plan was to cross the well know Szechenyi Bridge, which meant walking partly back the direction I had come from.  After hiking down from Buda Hill, I found that the bridge was closed to pedestrians while they fix it.  So that meant walking a lot further than I had planned.  Instead I ended up crossing the bridge up near Margaret Island.  My plan was to walk past the Parliament Building, though I wouldn't be able to go inside.  That building is stunning.  It is almost church-like on the outside, but not quite. 

Further down the Danube is the Shoes on the Danube memorial, which was placed there in 2005 to memorialize the Jews that were gunned down at the river's edge in December 1944 and January 1945, after the Hungarian fascists took over, with the help of Hitler.  The soldiers had the Jews take off their shoes before shooting at them, causing them to fall backwards into the river.  If the bullets didn't kill them, the cold water did.  There was what appeared to be either an Israeli tourist group or a Jewish tourist group there as I arrived.  They were places mementos, Israeli flags, and candles there.  It is amazing how powerful dozens of empty shoes can be.  Their significance being that before they were gunned down, the militia told them to take off their shoes, because those were worth something to them.  Something they could sell or use.

I finished the evening by watch the sunset over the Danube.