We woke up to a gorgeous day in Budapest. It was probably going to be in the 70s F (23s C) and the sun was out. My husband wanted to see the last of the "Saint Steven's" on this trip so we were going to the Basilica for sure. Then we were going to walk across the Danube and see the palace. This was an ambitious plan on foot after our 50-mile day yesterday so to his horror, I decided to download the Bolt rideshare app. We rarely use rideshare as we are usually in places where we have a vehicle, or everything is close by. I could tell he wasn't pleased and would have preferred to walk, but I ignored that and did it anyway. Boy, was I glad we used Bolt!
My only regret was that I didn't do this in Prague, Passau or Vienna.
Somehow, it became my husband's mission to on this trip to go look at any church, cathedral or basilica that had "Stephen" or "Steven" in the name. Can you guess why? We did indeed manage to see all three religious buildings during this trip with "Stephen" in the name. He is still bragging about it.
The rideshare dropped us at St. Stephen's Basilica. It doesn't look that big in the photo, until you notice how small the people actually are. I have to say it is worth the price of entry, if only to take in the view at the top on the outside catwalk.
However, there were lovely things to see inside:
And the architecture and artwork were incredible.
There was an elevator, but it did not go to the very top which meant we were doing this:
Mind you, I had been riding or walking big distances around a city for the last 20 days, every day, and when I got to the top of these stairs, I was really out of breath. Plus, it was pretty scary climbing up because the stairs are grates, not solid, and you can see all the way down as you climb. They are pretty steep and there is just a railing. It was very unnerving. However, the juice, in this case, was definitely worth the squeeze.
If you ever visit this place, take the time to go to the top. The views are incredible:
While we on the catwalk, the bells of the church started to toll. It was noon and we were just lucky enough to be up there when they rang. I wish I could upload a video of it here. What an experience that was. We think the bell was located in the clock tower of shown in the upper of these two view photos. On the way down we toured the treasury in the basilica:
After touring the basilica, we headed off on foot to cross the Danube to see the Buda Castle Palace. The bridge over the Danube had a great pedestrian path. It isn't that obvious until you get to it, but the palace is at the top of a very steep hill. There were some great photo opportunities on the bridge as well. I love the architecture here:
By the time we crossed the bridge, I was hot and thirsty. It was a pretty decent walk over the bridge from the basilica. After buying a couple bottles of water at the base of the hill. I decided it was silly to hike up the hill and tire myself out more when we could take a funicular! I found the website and bought roundtrip tickets online. We'd never ridden one before and this might be my only chance. My husband went along with it, but he would have done the hike had I given him the choice. I knew better than to do that. This is the view from our ride up the hill:
And from the top of the hill after we arrived. You can see the top of the basilica in the background:
We walked around the palace grounds. Some areas were closed off for repairs or construction. We did not go inside anywhere. Beautiful buildings, though:
We headed off away from the palace to see what else was around. As we were walking down this street, I saw this sign for Dracula's Labyrinth. Supposedly Dracula was held here at some point. Well, being the vampire fan that I am, I just had to go look. We went down the stairs into it. It was pretty creepy:
You can view some of this for free but eventually you come to a tour desk where they charge you for a tour. It was cash in Forints only and we did not have enough Forints on us for a tour and we didn't want to use the ATM machine that wasn't connected to a bank, so we passed on it. I'm sad because I think I would have liked to have seen the rest of it.
After that, we decided to get an early dinner. We ate at a touristy, expensive place as it seemed easier than going back to the hotel and then finding a place. We ended up getting goulash. I know, cliche but we were in Hungary, after all. We noticed the table next to us ordered nachos. Being from Texas we found that hysterically funny. Hungarians eating Tex-Mex and Texans eating Hungarian.
After that we rode the funicular back to the bottom, I hailed a car using Bolt and we went back to the hotel.
Our flight out of Budapest was leaving at 6:30 am the next morning, which meant we had to leave the hotel about 3:30. I had ordered a car to take us there the day before. As we were flying with our bike, we were not sure if they were going to give us grief about the size, dimensions or weight at the airport, so wanted to have plenty of time to deal with any issues. Apparently, the airport was not going to be our big issue.
The car arrived to take us to the airport, and it was very clear that our bag was not going to fit in the car. Ugh. I felt horrible because the driver was up at 3:30 am for a fare he wasn't going to collect. I explained to him that I repeatedly told the desk clerk we had a large bag, and he assured me it would fit. I ended up slipping him some Euros as an apology, after he called someone, yelling on the phone at whoever was on the other end.
The next car arrived 10 minutes later and by the Grace of God we got the big bike bag in it. Then the ride to the airport was the second scariest moment of this tour ha ha. We arrived at the airport and had no problems checking our bike bags. Our flight was on time, we made our connection in Frankfurt with time to spare and as we were an hour from landing in Houston, Texas. I noticed on the flight monitor that our destination had been changed to Dallas, Texas. I nudged hubby and said, we are heading for Dallas. A few minutes later we were told that storms were really bad, and we didn't have enough fuel to keep circling, so we were going to lay up in Dallas, which we did for two hours, on the tarmac. The irony is that we could have driven home from Dallas in the time we were stuck there. We finally got to Houston, three hours past our flight arrival time and electricity around the airport (not at the airport) was out, all the traffic lights were out, we had to haul all our bags to another terminal to catch the parking lot shuttle to our vehicle. It was horrible trying to get out of the airport area. It was at that point that we decided we are never flying with our tandem bicycle again. It's just too heavy and hard to haul around.
So, I think we are going to start thinking about electric assist bikes. They were everywhere in Europe.
I'm sure our first experience with them will be very comical.
If you would like to read more about our three week-long bicycle tour starting from the beginning, in Prague, Czech Republic, here are the links to our previous tour days:
Day Zero in Prague (Weather or not I wanted to)
Day One.... The Hills are Alive .... and I am not
Day Two....Vistas and Grocery Stores (and an angry cashier)
Day Three.... Are we Hiking or Cycling? (Today it was hard to tell....)
Day Four.....My Favorite Place on the Entire Tour (and a nod to the Beer of Kings along the way)
Day Four and a Half (I couldn't do it justice in one post)
Day 5 ...... Will This Day Ever End???
Day Six... Pausing in Passau (AKA This is the way we wash our clothes.....I think....)
Day Seven - Off down the Danube (If we'd only had that meeting.....)
Day Eight - We needed a day like today.....
Day Ten Cycling the Danube - Cloudy With a Shot of Melk
Day Eleven Cycling the Danube... A rare short mileage day!
Day Twelve Cycling the Danube - Aahhhh Vienna!!!
Day 13 - Our Day in Vienna (It's not supposed to be this HOT)
Day 14: Vienna to Petronell-Carnuntum (Apparently, I can speak some Italian.....)
Day 15 Petronell-Carnuntum, Austria to Bratislava, Slovakia (Rain and broken Chain...)
Day 16 Bratislava, Slovakia to Gyor, Hungary (There's a snake in the grass....)
Day 18: Komarno, Slovakia to Esztergom, Hungary (A tense tummy and a tense moment......)
Day 19: Esztergom to Budapest, Hungary (A long ride for the last day)
