Budapest

One would never imagine that Budapest is a city that has suffered at the hands of two different totalitarian regimes in the past 80 years. Beautiful renaissance buildings and famous landmarks combine to make the city good value for its place at the top of the ‘city break’ category in any travel brochure.

Arriving in Budapest late afternoon we proceeded to promptly get ripped off by a taxi driver who thoroughly took advantage of the fact that after withdrawing thousands of the local currency (one Hungarian Forint being equivalent to £0.003), I had no real grasp of the worth of the currency in hand.

Fortunately this was the only minor blemish during our stop at enchanting Budapest.

The first night we tucked into a meal at the Irish bar yards from our hotel. Delightful staff and wonderful food more than made up for the incident earlier on in the day.

Normally I am not one for tours of a city, preferring to navigate my own way around the noteworthy points. In Berlin the public transport easily made this possible, and in Krakow and Bratislava the majority of sights existed in close proximity to one another making walking between the places possible. However, in Budapest a tour is a must!

The city itself sits astride a gentle curb in the Danube and comprises of three former towns that merged to form the city today. The two main districts are Buda, a hilly area located on one side of the Danube and home to the castle amongst other landmarks, and Pest which is a flat area on the other side of Danube. Pest is home to Heroes Square, the main city park and all the major shopping and economic areas of the city.

So with the landmarks so separated, we purchased a 48 hour tour that allows you to hop on and off as you please with buses running at regular intervals throughout the day. The flexibility of the ticket is especially useful and allowed for us to go back the next day with a greater idea of the areas that we wanted to visit more thoroughly.

The tour took in several amazing landmarks all a fantastic sight and a photographer’s heaven, but it is at night when the landmarks take on a whole new level. Light illuminate each and allow for even the most novice of photographers so capture some pictures of a lifetime. The castle and chain bridge were my particular photographic success stories and I later went back to the bridge to take some long exposure images to capture the intensity of traffic that whizzes by this precious landmark.

Visiting Budapest it is easy to forget that the city suffered greatly at the hands of both Nazi and Soviet forces, who both occupied the city one after another. The old buildings remain well preserved and the new ones a sign that the city has flourished under the capitalism which was absent for so long.

To really understand the human cost of the occupations we visited the Terror House Museum which explains the pain suffered by the Hungarian citizens during the past century. A bargain admission price of 900 Forint makes the museum a great place to spend an afternoon.

As we prepare to take the short journey to Vienna, I can now thoroughly understand why Budapest is such a sought after destination for a weekend away.