Day 18: Salzburg to Budapest

For those of you that have been reading my previous entries, I'm sure you won't be at all surprised to read that once again it was an early morning for me. I'm just full of surprises aren't I???

Sadly the reason for this early start was because I was leaving Salzburg, but as I was heading to Budapest, it wasn't all bad news. Given my hotel was only a few minutes walk away from the train station, I was able to check out and make it to the platform with 10 minutes to spare.

The RailJet arrived just after 7am and although I got on at the wrong end (there were essentially two trains joined together to from the one train), I changed to the right train in Vienna. All up the trip took about 5¾ hours.

Image source

The train arrived at the historic Budapest Keleti pályaudvar (or Budapest East Railway station) that was built between 1881-1884.  One of the first things I did, apart from telling what felt like 101 (probably mostly illegal) taxi drivers that I didn't need a taxi, was to change some money as I need to get myself some Hungarian Forints, because even though Hungary is part of the European Union, it is yet to adpot the Euro as its currency.

I changed my money at an official office, but there were heaps of men around supposedly offering better rates.  Not surprisingly my “Scam radar” was pretty high so I just said no. Later on at the hotel I read that while these guys do offer a better rate, it is a scam, as once they hand over the wad the notes after you given them your Euro, they then take off and people then find that the top note is real, and the rest is just newspaper. Glad I trusted my instincts.

Next challenge was to work out the metro system. Thankfully, given there are only 3 lines, it was very easy to master, so I got my ticket and jumped on the Red M2 line and arrived at the Deák Ferenc Tér stop. Once I got my bearings (I just looked for the big church) I was easily able to find my way to my hotel for the next two nights, the Hotel Central Basilica.

After checking in, I joined up with a Free Budapest Walking tour that just happened to leave just down the road from my hotel. Once again, my pre-trip research paid off, and after my good experience with the free tour in Munich, I thought I may as well give it a go.  We started off walking around Pest (the flat side) of the city.

Locks of love...

Our guide Anna...

The Danube...

Then we crossed the Danube via the Széchenyi Chain Bridge to Buda but because we were on a walking tour we didn't use the funicular, we instead walked up Buda Hill. You can imagine how happy this made me. LOL

 

 

 

 

The tour was a great way to discover the city while walking around both Buda and Pest. All up the walk took around 3 hours. I then spent some time exploring the Buda side before heading back to the hotel before dinner.

 

 

 

 

For dinner I had a traditional Hungarian goulash with noodles for dinner and it was pretty good.

After dinner I caught the historic Yellow M1 (which dates from 1896 and was declared a World Heritage Site in 2002) to Hősök tere (Heroes' Square) to see the 14 giant statues & colonnades that are a tribute to rulers and statesmen of Hungary, before heading back to the hotel for some well earned sleep.