We arrived in Budapest on the train about 16:30 and we followed the advice in the guidebook and headed for the taxi rank instead of taking one of the many unofficial taxis that were trying to get passengers on the way through the station. The taxi driver had no idea what street name I was talking about, but luckily I had the hotel address written down. He told me how to pronounce it but I still couldn't, the street name was Lanchid utca.
We arrived at our hotel the Design hotel Lanchid 19, which is situated just below the castle on the Buda side of the Danube. The hotel gave us several leaflets of things to do, and told us that if we needed them to book anything for us they would. That evening we stayed in the hotel for dinner, and had a bottle of Hungarian tractor (tractor on label) wine between us (quality stuff ;-))
The following morning we got up had a quick breakfast and headed up to the castle on the funicular. We instantly began to like Budapest, the views across the Danube and the old looking buildings have a certain character which reminded us of Prague. We spent the morning wandering around the castle district before catching another hop-on hop-off which took us to the Citadel. We stopped to take some photos of the view at the top, and had some hot wine to keep the cold at bay. After that we took the bus to the Pest side of the river to have a wander on the Vaci utca, we had some ghoulash for lunch before getting the bus back to our hotel.
That evening was our wedding anniversary and I had booked us a restaurant for the evening. The restaurant Alabardos was world's apart from the restaurant in Vienna. We had the chef's surprise menu which had goose livers as a starter which I had never eaten before but they tasted great. They recommended wine for each course, and I'm not a wine expert by any means but they were all good as far as I was concerned. We were in time to catch the funicular back down to our hotel after dinner.
On the morning of the 17th we bought some tram tickets from the hotel reception and took the tram to the Liberty bridge so we could visit the Gellert hotel and Spa. We had a look around the hotel foyer but it wasn't much to look at so we headed off to the Cave chapel to have a look around. This chapel was carved out of the rocks and is quite impressive. After the cave chapel we visited the Gellert spa, you can buy a ticket which allows you to look around without going for a swim.
From the Gellert we walked over Liberty bridge and followed the Vaci Utca to the Elizabeth bridge. We kept on walking along the banks of the Danube until we reached the chain bridge and we walked back to our hotel. When we arrived at our hotel there was water dripping from the ceiling and there was no electricity, so we decided to go for a sightseeing cruise on the Danube to pass some time.
After we came back from our cruise, we went back to the hotel which had been cleaned up while we were out. We went to a local restaurant that evening for dinner.
At 12:00 on Sunday we headed off to the airport to come home, we have fond memories of Budapest.
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