hungary: visegrad and szentendre

one of the many reasons i like hungary is the possibility to stay in one city or town for a while, and do day trips to nearby towns...it's really nice not to have to pack up every day or two...i used budapest as my base for this entire trip, as it is easy to get to a number of nearby towns, yay!
remembering what i'd learned the day before about the necessary bus stop i got up around the same time, and out the door the same time, but this time got to the bus stop a good thirty minutes earlier...for whateva reason, i don't think i got to a town any earlier, but that's beside the point.

visegrad is another small town on one side of the danube river...the bus stopped quite regularly along it's route, i was never very sure which stop was the main one for visegrad...(even at the end of the walk around town i still didn't know)...
according to lonely planet, visegrad has the most history of the towns in the area, but very little of it is still visible...it's heyday was during the renaissance...its hard to believe the town used to be quite powerful, and used to control a sizeable area of the country...
i am sure that the stop where i got off wasn't the 'main' stop...i'm not sure what prompted me to hop off the bus there, but i did...thankfully i like walking, so it wasn't a big deal to walk a ways down the highway to get to something...

i found a tiny chapel on the river side of the highway, a very cute exterior...unfortunately it wasn't open...triposo tells me this is a roman catholic chapel, named after mary...built in the 18th and 19th centuries...
i managed to find the tourist information office; the man on duty was one of the rudest information people i've ever met...i walked in, he immediately asked 'what do you want?'...given that this was the information office, i would've thought that was obvious...he gave me a map, without pointing out any landmarks on the map, then told me i should go outside if i wanted to look at it more closely...i didn't feel at all as though he wanted to help me see the town...

the lonely planet guidebook mentions very few places to see in visegrad, the first of which is a palace...(triposo and tripadvisor don't even mention this palace)...only it isn't a real palace...well, it is, but it isn't, at the same time...
according to lonely planet, the palace once had 350 rooms...what exists now is nearly all a reconstruction, and even then it has only been partly reconstructed...i didn't like it at all...the reconstruction looks new, and the actual remains of what used to be don't make much sense at all...you get to see about 12 partly reconstructed rooms, i didn't feel as though i was seeing anything interesting
the gardens are nice, and i hope were much more extensive at one point in time...
i bought a few postcards on my way down the street after the palace, the
my next sight was a church...the front doors were open, but i wasn't able to go into the church past the front doors...there was an inner gate of sorts...too bad, as i would've enjoyed a few moments of quiet reflection...

what i could tell is that the central aisle had a carpet of flowers.  they were beautiful designed, i loved it. the pattern went all the way down the aisle, absolutely lovely. i'm assuming visitors were blocked from entering the church in order to keep the flower design looking awesome
i next found the beginning of the path that took me on a nice hike to the remains of the fortress overlooking the entire area...it was a nice hike...as i got to the fortress, i also found the parking lot, where it seemed most people started their visit to the fortress...the parking lot was surrounded by tourist stalls, none of which sold anything that interested me...

the fortress had a couple options for an entry fee, i opted for the one excluding the wax room...i didn't need to see wax representations of anything...each room in the fortress had an exhibit about one aspect of the history of the area...very well done, much more so than the palace i'd already seen...
perhaps the best part of the fortress was the ability to look out over the entire area...fantastic views...if there was a bridge to cross over to slovakia, i would've explored a couple of the small towns on the other side of the river :)
i wasn't able to find the path going down from the fortress, so i ended up going down the same way i came up...i didn't mind, since it was still pretty...

as i got back into town, i found the closest bus stop on the highway...i got lucky, and a bus came along within 10 minutes. yay!!
i got off the bus in szentendre...go figure, i hopped off at yet another stop that wasn't the right stop to get to where i wanted to be...i ended up wandering, and purely by luck ended up in the town center, the cute area of the town...
szentendre used to be ruled over by visegrad, but doesn't have a lot of history itself...it's now mostly an artists colony popular with tourists...there is a small central platz, with a memorial cross in the middle...

streets stretch out in several directions from this central area, all filled with shops and restaurants for tourists...i couldn't help but wonder where locals eat, because i'm pretty sure they wouldn't pay the prices these restaurants were charging...the shops had all sorts of kitchy stuff, none of which interested me...(except postcards of course, and i saw those in less than half the shops)...if i'd had the room in my tummy, i would've bought ice cream at the various shops, just to see which place had the best...hee hee hee...i exercised some willpower and only had one cone...with two scoops of course...
the one sight i enjoyed was the serbian orthodox church and museum on top of the hill in the middle of town...the church was quite small, but i was the only one in there at the time, so it was quiet and comfortable...the iconostasis was beautiful...
the museum was full of religious art...the signage was fantastic, in both hungarian and english...it was only two large rooms, but i really liked both of them...if art interested me more than it does, i would've enjoyed it even more...

also on top of the hill was a church dedicated to st john the baptist...again i got lucky with being the only person in there during my visit; it felt welcoming and comfortable...(i couldn't help but wonder if all the tourists down in the center platz saw anything on the hill)
there wasn't anything else to see in szentendre, so i wandered through the back streets to find the same bus stop at which i'd gotten off the bus when i arrived in town...not too long afterward, i arrived back in budapest :)

hungary: esztergom

Esztergom was the first place I've been in Hungary other than Budapest. The original plan was to visit Esztergom and another town in the same day, but it took longer than planned to get to Esztergom, and I spent longer there than planned, so it was just the one town for the day.

I woke up plenty early in my hostel, and of course took longer than planned to get out the door. The person working the front desk gave me the name of a bus station so that's where I went. It wasn't close, and I went the wrong way at one point, so it took even longer than it should've. 

When I got to that bus station, the ticket clerk told me it was the wrong station, so I had to go all the way to the other end of the metro line to get to another bus station. Ugh.

Fortunately when I got to the correct station, I got a ticket for a bus leaving in less than 15 minutes. Yay!

The bus ride was longer than I expected. The guidebook said 90 minutes, it was actually more than two hours. Especially because the bus got stuck in a traffic jam just as we were coming into Esztergom.

Finally I arrived, yahoo! By this point it was almost noon, I'd originally been thinking I would be there by 1030. 

Anywho, I got off the bus, and started walking. The first thing I found was the end of a local produce market, only a few stalls were still open. 

My next stop was the platz in the middle of town. I was the only one there, even though it was the middle of Saturday.  In the middle of the platz was a memorial, to the victims of a plague epidemic that happened several hundred years ago. Rather depressing to see, even though it was quite pretty. 

One side of the platz was cute, and very photogenic, of course I took photos. 

From this platz I walked a bit north, making my way toward a bridge mentioned in lonely planet and triposo. The bridge is important because it goes over the Danube, to Slovakia. I walked the bridge, just to say I visited Slovakia during this trip.

I took all kinds of photos; I took photos of each of the four 'ends' of the bridge, I took photos of the 'welcome to Hungary/welcome to Slovakia signs in the middle of the bridge, I took photos of the boundary line marked on either side of the bridge, and one of my feet on either side of the border. 

After the bridge, I walked through and around a park near the river. Very pretty, and I was the only one there. By this point I was really wondering where all the people of this city could be found. It was Saturday, and a beautiful day.

Up the hill from this park I came to a city museum, as well as a BIG basilica.

It was really big, especially considering the size of the town. The entry fee included several options, namely the crypt, treasury, cupola, and more. 

I started by wandering the main area. Beautiful frescoes all over the church, and I loved the ceiling of the cupola as I usually do. Then I found the stairs heading up to the treasury and cupola. The treasury was about halfway up. I showed my ticket, then went through the turnstile. The displays included gorgeous vestments worn by important people in the church over the years. I also got to see items of importance, like candlesticks and plates and more. Great displays. Some of the signage was in Magyar and English, but not all. I didn't read all that was in English, just because I was a bit overwhelmed by the amount of information. Still, the effort put forth by the museum was very much appreciated.

I continued up the stairs, all the way to the top, by which point my legs were like jello. 

That being said, it was worth it. My ticket allowed me to go on a walkway around the outside of the cupola. Fantastic views all around, including over the river into Slovakia. (The town on that side looked very different from Esztergom.) I could've stayed up there foreva, if there had been a place to sit down. As it was, I took heaps of photos, though none of them really showed what I was seeing. 

The stairs back down made my legs feel even weaker, hee hee. I got back down to the main sanctuary, then found the stairs down to the crypt. The crypt wasn't big, and seemed mostly devoted to one person. At least, I could only see one tomb. 

After climbing up the stairs and going in front of the basilica, I enjoyed looking at the front of the whole building. It's big, to say the least. It took me a while, (waiting for the area to be clear of people) but I finally got a photo of the whole thing. So pretty. 

I wandered back down the hill by another series of streets. I stopped for a late lunch at one of many gyro places, and picked up water and snacks at a supermarket. 

Eventually I got back to the bus station, and got lucky with a seat on the next bus back to Budapest. For whateva reason, the ride back to Budapest was at least 30 minutes faster than it had been on the way to Esztergom. 

belgium: brussels

I love the way various members of my extended family have lived in different countries. For this visit, my cousin Bryn was my host in Brussels, Belgium.

My flight left kyiv early in the morning, so there was no traffic to interfere with me getting to the airport on time. Yay! The line to checkin was long and slow, argh. Why doesn't Ukrainian Airlines do online checkin? The flight departed late, I never figured out why.

Upon arrival it was easy enough to take the train to the central train station (Gare Centrale) where cousin Bryn met me. We walked to his flat and caught up for a while before heading out again. 

We walked toward the city center, stopping in a church or two, and heaps of chocolate shops. Belgium is known for chocolate, for good reason. Pieces of chocolate, not bars of chocolate, though they were available as well. By the time the day was over if bought about 10 different pieces of chocolate. And this was just the first day :) I decided my goal was to find the best couer framboise.  Some stores were more expensive than others, sometimes that corresponded to taste, sometimes not.

The city centre is full of tourists, as well as small places to buy waffles and frites (French fries.) 

When we turned the corner into the Grande Place I was well and truly impressed. It's basically a giant platz. The buildings surrounding the platz are almost all big, and beautiful. I loved it. Definitely a good place for people watching. Photos didn't turn out as well as I thought the whole area looked, i hope that's because the sky was flat and grey.

After going through the Grande Place we followed another street or two, finding ourselves in front of Mannekin Pis. It's a lot smaller than I expected. Mannekin Pis is a statue of a little boy peeing, with water coming out of that part of his body. I don't get it, why is it famous? During this visit the statue had a costume covering most of him. How often does that happen? 

At that point both of us were hungry, we decided to be tourists sortof. We each ordered frites at a random place. I chose mustard as my sauce, you could have ketchup and mayonnaise and a few others as well. Mayonnaise is the typical sauce, I'm so not a fan. 

After that, I decided I wanted a waffle too. (Obviously, a healthy diet was not going to happen.) I chose one covered in whip cream and strawberries, Bryn had Nutella. By the time I finished eating I was stuffed, I had no room for 'real' food! Oops! As often as I talk about eating healthy, this was an epic fail, but so worth it!

The next morning the first thing Bryn did was show me how to get to a nearby large supermarket. (This was useful the next day when Bryn had to go to work, but I had a few more hours to explore.)

From there we continued walking. We crossed another platz, this one set up with a farmers market of some kind. I found the stalls with baked goods of course :) I didn't buy any of those items, but I did buy when I found the hot chocolate stall. Yum. They had three different types: milk, white, and dark. Why don't all places that sell hot chocolate have these choices? 

Eventually we made it to a BIG park. I think the name of the park is Cinquantenaire. There is a giant 'gate' in the middle of the park. On this particular day the park was the start and end point for a running festival. The main race was a 20km. (Why not a half marathon distance of 21.1km?) there were people everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Bryn and I have both run multiple marathons, though he takes running and training in general a whole lot more seriously than I do. I'm just happy to finish any race I run, he has actual goals. Seeing all these people made me think I should run the event next year.

We walked out another exit of the park, making our way to the area of town where the EU commission buildings are located. All I have to say about them is that they're not architecturally appealing. At all. 

Those buildings were yucky, so we decided to walk through the gardens close to the royal palace. The gardens are pretty. A few statues, walking paths, old trees, etc... We got to the palace itself, and due to the crappy weather there weren't many people out in front. Yay for photos without people. I wonder if it's ever possible to go inside the palace. It's big, but not super impressive outside; is the interior the same?

From there we walked to a monument which I think was an eternal flame. I'm not sure though. As we got there the wind picked up, as did the rain. YUCK. I know I've mentioned previously how I feel about rain. YUCK. Wind and rain make picture taking more difficult as well. 

The main Cathedral was close. It was big, and the front facade was quite nice. The interior wasn't nearly as impressive. Or maybe I'm just churched out. 

It continued being windy, and raining from time to time. To get out of the crappy weather we stepped into a cafe with a lovely display in the window. It ended up being a great choice. I had a slice of a raspberry tart, YUM. 

More time in the city center, including another church. This one was much more appealing to me. Smaller, much more friendly. 

I got another waffle, saw flavors as before. Again, YUM. At this point I realized it's a good thing I don't live in Brussels, I'd be HUGE! Between the chocolates and waffles, eeek.  When I ordered this waffle I had an entertaining conversation with the guy who worked there, in French. I love being able to speak a little of another language. 

I bought more chocolates. I think I ended up buying chocolates from all the main brands in Brussels. Except Godiva, I've had that brand plenty of times in other countries.

I wasn't hungry, but I realized I needed 'real' food, as I hadn't had any in a couple days. Bryn knew of a nearby street with several good choices, I ended up choosing a pita. Protein and veggies, I needed those. Since I wasn't full I didn't enjoy it as much as I could've, but I'm still glad I ate. Of course by the time I was done I wasn't feeling so good, I had way too much food in me.

The next morning I packed up, and walked Bryn to work. It was still a holiday for me, but not for Bryn. Then I made my way to the supermarket. I wanted to bring back chocolates for everyone at work, I figured I could find a box or several for cheaper than the stores in the city centre. I think I ended up buying three boxes :) 

Then I made my way to a metro stop, and figured out how to get to the atomium. It's a big, um, thing. Several of the molecules are part of a science oriented museum. That didn't interest me, I just enjoyed looking at the exterior. The atomium is in the middle of a park, I enjoyed strolling around and watching people.

At some point I realized I needed to hop back on the metro and get back to the airport. So I did. I got there later than I wanted, but being late meant there was almost no queue left at checkin. Thank goodness for not having to  check a bag!