Julia woke early for a run through the streets of Budapest,
getting only a little lost, and woke Rachel and I when she returned. As Jim was scheduled to arrive this afternoon
for the start of his part of this vacation, our main objective today was to see
parts of Budapest that wouldn’t conflict with things he’d likely want to see
with us, which cut out any of the major attractions in town. Instead, we decided to get out into the hills
on the Buda side and get a view of the city from above. And getting there was a large part of the
adventure. We set out with very little
guidance—our map didn’t even cover where we were going, all we had was a little
post-in written by the hostel owner (Agnes) with some key names of where we
wanted to go. But we were grateful to
have that helpful little piece of paper at almost every turn.
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| Tram |
We started off walking to the tram which
we which we took to its end. We then had
a short walk to the start of the Cog Railway, built in 1874, which (once we
located it) slowly took us up further into the hills, nearly 4 km in 14 minutes. Between the tram and the railway it started
to rain; our umbrellas safe and sound back at the hostel, Rachel went into a
store to get a plastic bag to cover the camera and came out with a banana which
for some reason Julia carried with her the rest of the day. It became a sort of science experiment to
watch it ripen as we walked. We assured her we would eat soon so she should keep
carrying it.
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| Cog Railway |
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| The Children's Railway |
The Cog Railway dropped
us another short walk from the Children’s Railway, built in 1951 by
Pioneers (socialist Scouts) and entirely staffed by school children aged
10-14. The child labor was cute, but
also honestly a little creepy especially when they saluted as the train took
off.
We chose to take the Children’s
Railway only one stop (instead of the guide book recommended four) because I’d
remembered reading that was the best place to grab lunch along the route (though
I didn’t quite remember where). I’m not
sure I found the “right” place but we did have a yummy lunch. Agnes had told us from there it was a nice
and easy hike through the woods to a chairlift that we could take down to enjoy
wonderful views of the city. But that
is where the directions got a little fuzzy.
We asked at lunch and our waiter was pretty clear that we couldn’t take
any path through the woods, that we needed to follow the street for 20 minutes
and we would get there, but we were sure the woods would get us there since
Agnes told us so. So, while there were
many paths near the woods we somehow concluded she meant the meant the woods
right next to the train tracks so we headed back over the tracks and into the
woods. There were so many “trails” heading
different directions. I have no idea why we thought we had it right, and soon
knew for sure we had it totally wrong.
But, like good explorers we didn’t turn back but just kept straight
ahead. Eventually we came to a street
and felt confident we could get back to something familiar. We eventually got back close to where we had
begun and are pretty sure we actually found the start of the path that Agnes
intended us to be on.
There
were all sorts of markings on the trees that first gave us confidence and then made us feel like we were in the
middle of a Nancy Drew video game…on a challenge we weren't passing. Luckily we had that scrap of paper with us
and we found enough Hungarians along the way to keep pointing us the in right
direction. 
We went past the chairlift a
little further up a rugged stepped trail to Elizabeth Tower and up 101 steps in
the tower to enjoy amazing views of the city we will be exploring.  |
| The House of Paliament in the middle there |
We returned to the chairlift and rode down the mountain,
but had no plan for how to get back to the city from there. The bottom of the
chairlift was crawling with people and police and other uniformed people and a
line of nicely dressed people going through a security tent. We looked more closely and saw that many of
the uniforms were of the U.S. State Department so we got a little closer to find
out what was happening: a 4th of July celebration at the home of the
U.S. Ambassador. I got my information from
a nice Texan man who has lived in Budapest for 20 years. Though he said no many times, I feel confident
with a little more effort I could have talked my way into that party. Instead, he very kindly pointed us to a bus stop
and told us which one to take all the way back to our neighborhood. Five modes of transportation for our little
adventure! We needed to get back to the
hostel to wait for Jim’s arrival since we thought his plane had already landed,
but once we got to wifi we learned that he had missed his connection in Paris
and wouldn’t be arriving until after 11 pm after all.
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| We finally let her throw it away |
When I took my initial cash out of the ATM I got several
20,000 notes that we’ve been finding hard to get anyone to take, so we decided
to head to the nearby mall to find an open bank to see if they would exchange
mine for smaller bills. We couldn’t find
anyone to do that without charging a fee so we decided to see if the big cinema
there had anything playing in English.
Only one was subtitled in Hungarian rather than dubbed, so we bought our
tickets to see Me Before You two hours later. Feeling the need to see some part of the city center, we
then raced to get to the House of Parliament before it closed at 6 pm to see if
we could reserve tickets for and English tour tomorrow, something our book said
must be done in person but turns out can easily (and only) done online (what
you get for using an old tour book from the library). But at least we got to see some beautiful
buildings!
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| House of Parliament up close |
Julia’s sudden acquisition
of a spot-on sense of direction has thrown our travel dynamic out of whack. I
think her morning jogs on her own have helped her map out the city in her mind
and so far in Budapest she is much more oriented than I am! During our fast-paced walk we passed a place
called The Shake Bar that we came back to for a dinner on the way back to the
mall. We thoroughly enjoyed our movie, popcorn ($2 for a small!), and candy and
walked back to our apartment (another daily total of over 21,000 steps) to
await Jim’s new arrival time.
He just walked in now as I’m writing this (around
midnight) without any luggage! (Tina,
you were right!) Poor guy had to spent 8 unexpected hours in the Paris airport
only to arrive to lost luggage. Hopefully
it arrives soon…we have lots of Budapest to see now that he’s finally here!
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