It
has been quite some time since I’ve added a write-up to the page, so here we go
with a summation of our 1 year anniversary trip to Europe; specifically,
Budapest (Hungary), Vienna (Austria), and Prague (Czech Republic). How did we wind up with this package? Two main reasons: 1. Dorothy took care of
Iceland for my birthday and 2. Dorothy’s mentions of Italy and Greece have been
in political turmoil and rioting has been on and off for the past few
months. “No thanks” on the latter
options. This package of cities has been
on the radar since originally visiting Europe a handful of years ago and we
found a very reasonable package on Gate1Travel.com – two nights in each city
and we upgraded the hotels. Towards the
end, I’ll provide some overall thoughts on each city, but for the time being,
here’s a recap of the trip itself:
We
left for the trip on our Anniversary (4/2) and were flying out of Newark
Airport, to Munich, Germany and then a quick flight over to Budapest. Never one to disappoint, for some reason the
TSA didn’t allow for an alcohol delivery to the bar/restaurants in Newark’s
Terminal B that day and there was no Pinot Grigio for Dorothy at McGinley’s
Irish Pub. So that’s how things started
on this trip.
After
going through a handful of available options, we chose to fly Lufthansa on the
way over to Europe and Swiss Air on the way back. Note to European airlines, in general,
Americans are lazy and hate to be uncomfortably hot. There were no personal vents on the
trans-Atlantic flight from Newark to Munich.
How is this even possible? It
could not have been hotter on this flight. Dorothy, who is always cold, was hot and my
body was permeating heat. I was so
uncomfortable that I chose to stand in the bathroom of the plane for two
minutes because there was an air vent flowing in there. Yes, the air flow that had the scent of a
urinal was the preferred option. Outside
of this, everything else was pretty good on the Lufthansa flight – food, liquor,
the bathrooms being on the lower level of the plane. We just couldn’t bear the heat. (We did watch the Descendants, and I must say
that was a very good movie.)
We
landed in Munich airport for our connection; very impressive airport – very
quiet and very clean. We also noticed
that there are no rules for boarding planes in Europe. When it is ready to board, everyone just
goes. Our flight to Budapest was
relatively short, thankfully, as there were two kids behind us that couldn’t
have acted worse (more on this later).
The plane even had air vents!
However, when they passed out the food, Dorothy and I looked at each
other and laughed. It was some type of
brat, some awful looking mashed potato concoction, and a pickle. Pass.
Landing
in Budapest, we had arranged for Gate1Travel to provide a car service to take
us directly to the hotel – Ibis Heroes Square.
This was a pretty good hotel that was very close to the Metro (to take
downtown) and to Heroes Square. It also
has a 24/7 café for food and booze.
Nice! The only problem we ran
into with the hotel was, once again, the heat.
We
planned to walk through Castle Row in Budapest on day one. I have to say that Budapest exceeded my
expectations, as it really was a beautiful city. We crossed the Chain Bridge to get to Castle
Row and took the gondola up the side of the mountain just in time to see a
changing of the guard ceremony. Looking
around at/for various castles, we stumbled upon the Hilton, which also hosts a
wine tasting. Unfortunately, not on the
day we show up.
Dorothy
and I made our way back across the bridge/river and into the downtown
area. There were a number of booths with
souvenirs and local cuisine. We also
found what I’ll dub “Casino Row” with a ‘Trop’ and a few other casinos (which
became part of day two activities). We
wound up having dinner on a riverside boat which was really good - http://www.columbuspub.hu/
On
day two our goal was to walk through Heroes Square and go to one of the more
popular Hungarian Bathhouses – Szechenyi Thermal Baths (http://www.szechenyibath.com/ ) right in the
park behind Heroes Square. This was
definitely one of the highlights of the trip as this was beautiful and a lot of
fun. The Speedo was not as prevalent as
we had thought. After the Baths and
showering, we wound up taking the Metro back downtown to see the Parliament and
a few other buildings, stopping at the Menza Café to eat based on a few
recommendations. The local foods were
actually really good. We got a little lost
trying to find the Café and ironically, it was about 200 feet from where we had
stopped to try to look at a map (30 minutes before actually walking further and
finding it…).
I
booked a dinner cruise for us for the evening as the “paper” anniversary gift. This wound up being another highlight of the
trip as it was very nice to see all of the buildings on both sides of the
Danube River light up in the evening.
The tour had a full buffet and Hungarian musicians to play for us. We thought there was going to be dancing as
well, but that might have been our misunderstanding. Net/net, a river cruise is highly recommended
when visiting Budapest. Here’s who we
used: http://www.perfecttoursbudapest.com/danube.php#4
After
the river cruise we made our way back downtown to pop in and out of a few cafes
and then made our way to ‘The Trop’. You
have to sign your life away to get into these places and I did this for a
measly loss of 40 Euros. Annoying.
We
were up early on day three to get to the train station, with the thought that
there would be some type of line, customs check, etc. Nope.
Completely unnecessary to get up at the time we did and over to the
train station. However, here’s a tip for
the station, don’t let any track employees “help” you with your bags. Some guy came over to Dorothy while I went to
check out the signs and then took us to a room with our bags. When the train came, he came back and brought
our bags on the train for us. I gave him
a tip but it conveniently wasn’t enough.
After about two minutes of back and forth, I decided to hand him some
more and told him to beat it. It worked,
but we were basically scammed.
The
train ride from Budapest to Vienna is only about 2.5 hours, so not bad at
all. We were dropped off at the Wien
Melding station in Vienna which does not look like any of the classical looking
train stations I’ve become accustomed to in Europe. It looked like a NJ Transit stop. This isn’t a compliment.
We
took a cab directly to our hotel – The Senator Hotel. While the room was hot as well, it wasn’t as
bad as the prior hotel in Budapest, while the room itself was very nice. We eventually found the means of opening up
the windows to the room – thanks to the maid – and the rest was history. Breakfast was a little bit better here as
well. The bar at the hotel was open
until midnight with the workers at the front desk pulling double duty as a bartender. The one drawback to the hotel was its
location to City Center, as we decided to cab it to and from each day for
around 10-15 Euros (each way). There is
a tram station right by the hotel, but we decided to skip learning the stops
for the 1.5 days we were there. If we
were going to be there longer, we would have taken the time and effort to do
so.
On
our first trip to City Center we asked the cab driver to take us to the
University. If you are looking at a map,
this is the northwest corner of City Center and you can loop around it from there. Instead, our cab driver took us to Stadtpark
(City Park) – only the furthest possible option from the University within the
loop and the southeastern corner of City Center. Thanks.
We desperately needed to eat and quickly found a beer garden in Stadtpark,
which was filled with customers. We saw
a helicopter land and take back off from the hotel right next door to the
park. This was probably the President of
Austria (or the Governator) but we’ll never know.
Given
the change in our drop-off point, we had to completely re-route the plan of
attack. I’m only slightly kidding
here. After wrapping up Stadtpark we
walked towards Stephandson Church, which was undergoing some major reparations. It is a beautiful building though. We then walked through the shops and squares
of City Center and found a goldmine of a restaurant; Sparky’s. Not only did they serve Guinness, but for
whatever reason, there were way too many Avatar figures and dedications in the
place.
I’ve
failed to mention that right before the trip and even on the first few days,
Dorothy was a little sick. Guess who
caught at least some of that bug by the time he got to Vienna. So you have two tired, somewhat sick, and
cranky tourists, which led to a lot of taking it easy and a shift to “American”
food throughout the next 24 hours – which skipping ahead to our dinner for a
second, included fish and chips and chicken fingers.
We
plowed through a number of other highlight sites, buildings, and monuments,
including; Dorotheum Store/Museum, Horburg Palace (huge and beautiful),
Albertina Museum (more on Day 2), the State Opera House – where you can buy
standing room tickets for 3 Euro and leave whenever you choose, and Mozart
Park. We also walked the perimeter of
Museums Quarter and saw the Mother Theresa Monument, which was impressive. After stopping to eat our American style
dinner, it was back to Sparky’s for an hour or two and then back to the hotel
to call it a relatively early evening.
Day
two consisted of much of the same sightseeing of City Center and included the
Parliament, Rathaus Park, and more of Horburg Palace. We went back to the Albertina Museum to walk
through the Impressionists section – Dorothy’s favorite type of art. (Let’s pretend that I knew that before day
five of our one year anniversary trip.) The
architecture in Vienna was probably the best / most impressive of the three
cities on the trip. We didn’t have much
left to see so took care of souvenir shopping, ate lunch (pizza, still working
the American angle), and took a 20 minute horse carriage ride through the city. After a bit more sightseeing it was back to
the hotel for a few glasses of wine and to get ready for our Wine Tavern Tour -
http://www.viator.com/tours/Vienna/Vienna-Wine-Tavern-Night-Tour-with-Giant-Ferris-Wheel/d454-3585AT006VS
This
show was really good and I would recommend this tour for anyone looking for a
night activity that eats up a few hours.
The package included hotel pickup and drop-off. The first stop was to the amusement park in
Vienna to ride the giant Ferris wheel – as you can tell from the link. The Ferris wheel provides some impressive
views of the city. Afterward, you are
transported a good 30 minutes away to the hills of Vienna and where the
wineries are. While I wouldn’t classify
this as a wine tour, the venue they do take you to for the show does have very
good red and white wine. Here we watched
a Viennese show while eating our one and only local meal for the stop in
Vienna. We knew that this was going to
be our local food source hence not seeing a problem in going American for the
few prior meals while in Vienna. The
meal itself was really good with various types of pork and potatoes. However, I still don’t like sauerkraut, even
3,000 miles away from home.
After
the show and being dropped off at the hotel, we decided to call it a night and
just enjoyed a few glasses of wine at the hotel bar.
We
were up early again for our train ride to Prague. The train from Vienna to Prague is about 4.5
hours, so this was a little bit more painful, but not too bad at all. Gate1Travel set us up with two seats across
from one another and no one bothered to try to set next to us with our luggage
and carry-on spread out and about. We
were able to walk from the train station to our hotel – Palace Hotel, which was
a nice end to the trip.
Due
to the holiday weekend (Easter), we had to upgrade our Prague hotel even
further due to sellouts on our package/plan.
This was not a problem whatsoever and the Palace Hotel was a great venue
– good rooms, bar, breakfast, staff, and best of all, location.
Our
first day in Prague was a little limited due to not getting into town until 3pm
or so. We wound up walking down to
Center City for a bite to eat and then did a good amount of walking around;
State Opera House, National Museum, Wenceslas Square, New Town Hall Tower,
Charles Square Park, Geary House (which was oddly shaped/designed and neat),
and a pit stop at U Fleku bar/restaurant.
I
found U Fleku (http://en.ufleku.cz/ ) in a .99 cent Nook
book and it only has one type of beer: dark.
Yes, please. Accordion players
walk around the room and the staff continuously walks around with trays of beer
for refills. We didn’t like the food, so
I recommend just going for drinks and the atmosphere. After a few rounds we were back to walking
around by the river, the National Theatre, and then circled back to Old Town
Square to see the Astronomical Clock and Tyn Church. At the corner of the Square we found Caffrey’s,
an Irish Pub. We actually wound up staying
here for a while, before heading back to the hotel to call it an evening.
Day two
in Prague took us across the Charles Bridge and over to the Castle
District. Before heading to the castles
though, we took the appropriate Easter Sunday stop at St. Nicholas Church and
walked into Our Lady Triumphant Church, the latter of which has the “Infant
Jesus of Prague” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_Jesus_of_Prague). After meeting our religious obligations, we
were off to the castles, walking up some pretty strong hills towards the US
Embassy (Dor may have said “which building?” while taking pictures … snotty
response “the one with the American flag”.
We were clearly closing in on the end of the trip …). We walked through the palaces, courtyards,
gardens, and back around to Prague Castle.
This didn’t look much like a castle at all and more like a bigger White
House more than anything else. We then
walked down the steps on the other side of palaces (“Zamecke Schody” steps) and
found a Christmas ornament store to add to our collection and a nice little
restaurant at the bottom of the steps for lunch.
After
lunch there was just a little bit more to see, but we couldn’t find the “Lennon
Wall” whatsoever. This was another site
added to the list from the .99 Nook book, to no avail. I’m not even sure it exists as no one could
clearly explain where to go to see it, and some people had no idea what we were
talking about. We gave up pretty quickly
and it was back across another bridge to take pictures of the Czech Government
buildings. From here we walked through
the Jewish Quarter of Prague, only to have just about everything closed for
Sunday.
The
last “to do” was to find the location of our meeting place for the Prague Pub
Crawl for later in the evening. http://www.pubcrawl.cz/prague-pub-crawl
After
locating this we went back to the hotel to change and then grabbed a quick bite
to eat at an English Pub, George & Dragon, right next to the Irish Pub and
minutes away from our meeting place. If
you know me at all, you know I’m about to recommend the Prague Pub Crawl. Despite being the senior member of the crawl
by a good 10 years (excluding Dor), this was a lot of fun and there was a good
crowd for a Sunday night (40-50 participants I would estimate). They start you off at their own bar with
beer, wine, absinthe, and shooters. From
there, a guide takes you to a few local venues and you eventually wind up at “Karlovy
Lazre” – which is apparently the largest nightclub in Central Europe. As an added bonus, it includes an Ice
Bar. Yes! We’re finally going into a building that isn’t
uncomfortably warm. That said, it wasn’t
nearly as cold as the ice bars we have been to in the past, but a welcoming
site nonetheless.
We
called it a night shortly thereafter and found a street cart open at 2am for some
food. Of course. Prague = Winning!
The
next day, our airport transfer picked us up at the hotel and took us to the
airport. For some reason, Swiss Air
doesn’t check people in more than two hours before the flight, so we were the
first online to check in, with about 40 minutes of standing around to do. This wound up being a blessing, as a number
of people dwindled in over the next 45 minutes, including a Czech sports team. So we beat all of this through security and
to the airport … bar. Swiss Air was
definitely better than Lufthansa in terms of food offering and leg space. However, once again, there were no air vents
for each individual seat on the trans-Atlantic flight. Who made this decision?! One other note about the flight home, remember
when I said that there were two kids on our flight from Munich to Budapest that
couldn’t have acted worse? Well, I was
wrong. On the trans-Atlantic flight
home, we had a family of six right by us and naturally, the parents, the older
child (~18), and grandmother took the row behind us, leaving the two kids (12
and 8 or so) next to us. As a quick
summary, these two miscreants were very likely the two worst behaving children
I have ever had to endure on a plane.
The family conveniently didn’t know English when either of us would turn
around and look at them. Extremely
annoying.
Overall
it was a great trip. I have to say that
Budapest exceeded my expectations and I would recommend it as a stop for anyone
interested in seeing this part of the world.
I’m not sure what I expected from Vienna, but it was certainly beautiful
from an architectural standpoint. If we
were to stay there a third day though, I would probably take a day tour to
Salzburg or recommend it to others.
Prague met my very high expectations.
It was nice to just be able to walk around a town and not have to worry
about public transportation at all on the last leg of a trip.
The
only “problems” we ran into on the trip were that Europeans are completely
comfortable being warm and I am not. At
all. The other is that smoking
cigarettes is very much alive and kicking throughout any and all venues in
Central Europe. We had a hard time with
this, especially with the sicknesses that were already being dealt with. Oh well, nothing we could do about either or,
so you have to make the best of it.
Finally,
a big kudos to Gate1Travel.com, for having everything work seamlessly for
us. They allowed the flexibility of the
hotel upgrades and such, sent over all of the documentation in a timely manner,
and the airport transfers were on time / early in each location. Thanks for making it that much easier for us!
I’m
going to add pictures for each city as separate entries in the coming days, so
they can be easily distinguishable between the three stops on the trip. We are also still combing through 2K pictures
to come up with some type of highlights montage to save everyone the pain of
going through everything.
In
any case, did we miss anything along the way?
Do you have any other recommendations for any of the cities?
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