Ukraine: Mukacheve

Mukacheve is another small town close to the Ukrainian border with Hungary and Slovakia. It's only an hour from uzhgorod by bus, and is overlooked by a nifty castle...
Not surprisingly, I didn't get out of my hotel in uzhgorod nearly as fast as I should've, considering I was wide awake at 0615, and breakfast was at 0830...I walked to the train station, checked my bag, then walked across the street to the bus station to catch a bus to mukacheve...
The ride was just an hour, and I used my iPhone to figure out where I was in town...I statutes walking toward the castle (the guidebook says to hop on a bus or marshrutka, but I prefer walking when possible)...

Along the way I saw several churches of varying architectural styles, but I didn't go in any of them...I liked the atmosphere of the rather quiet streets...I saw a lot of people on bikes, and horses pulling wooden wagons...awesome!
The castle is on top of a hill, on the edge of town...it's totally flat until you get to the bottom of the hill, so the walk up isn't super easy...I loved the views over town in all directions...the total height of the hill is only 65m but it felt like more, because the surrounding land is so flat...
The entry fee was cheap, only 10 or 20 griven, I don't remember...there were a lot of souvenir stalls all selling the same range of stuff, Ukrainian kitch...I bought postcards on my way out :)

The castle is said to have three levels, but it felt more like 2.5 to me...the entrance is a big gate, then a first courtyard surrounded by a 'cloister' of sorts...go through another tunnel-ish gatey thing, and another courtyard...
There are exhibits in some of the rooms, done quite well...other areas were blocked off, but it wouldn't have been hard to go behind the table or rope doing the blocking if I had been so inclined...
The castle was originally built in the 1400s, when the area was part of the Austro Hungarian empire...the walls are 10m high and 6m thick...there are places for 164 cannons (so says another guidebook) on the outside, becoming thicker and taller in the inner 'layers'...

According to this second guidebook, the castle was attacked a bunch of times (because it guarded valuable trade routes) and one of the most famous sieges was led by Ilona cringing, who allegedly knew 15 languages...she led a garrison of 2000 men, repelling Austrian army soldiers for 4 yrs...
The castle used to hold the crown of st Stephen, (it was being hidden from Napoleon) a Hungarian royal...the story says the lower part of the crown was blessed by the pope in Rome, and the upper part was sanctified by the Constantinople patriarch...(I don't know where this religious relic is now)...

I wandered around just to wander...there were a lot of people in the courtyards, but not so many elsewhere:)...it was fun to see where stairways led, and to find all the places where i could look out over the city...
As I walked back through town I ate lunch at a quick cafeteria style place, then got back to the bus station and caught the next bus back to uzhgorod...
I would come back here, there are some churches I missed, and general wandering :)