Well I made it to Budapest but not without suffering a mild heart attack! So when I travel internationally, I like to book all my hotels and train tickets ahead of time so that all I have to do is sit back and execute the plan. Well that all works great when you actually have a plan!
So for some reason this morning I thought, ya know I never really got a confirmation back from my B&B in Budapest and I’m staying there 7 nights so I figured I’d send an email just to confirm. Well they respond and said I never gave them my credit card info (I thought I did!) so they gave my room to someone else! Hyperventilating is beginning to take hold! Well luckily they have WiFi on the train because he and I must have traded 10 emails back and forth (I don’t have my phone set up for calls so all I had was email) but talk about great customer service… he found me a place for tonight (which I love but they only had availability for one night) then he found me a place for the remaining 6 nights. Crisis averted! You can bet I’ll be giving him a great review on TripAdvisor.com!
And you can guess what I did then. Yep, sent an email to confirm the remaining 8 hotels and all are good. YAY!
So Budapest is divided in two by the Danube River and one side is referred to as Buda and the other side Pest. Well the cool thing is now I’ll get to stay on both sides! Tonight I’m staying on the Buda side and the rest I’ll stay on the Pest side. And this place he found me is really nice. It has a direct view across the Danube to the beautiful (and huge) Parliament building (the one in the pics with the reddish brown rotunda – sort of looks like the Florence Duomo) and includes breakfast and is only $55!
So by the time I got to Budapest and then had to navigate the Metro and bus to get here and get settled it was like 5 PM. So I just did the “Rick Steves walk” in what’s called the Castle Hill district since there’s a big castle up on a hill (Duh!). WOW, this city is beautiful and I’ve only scratched the surface of a very small part of it.
I’ve shared some pics from my walk both day and evening. The city lit up at night is beautiful. Well hope everyone had a great Thursday!
Jeff
The Wandering Italian 