How to Plan an International Trip: Travel Tales and Tips : Budapest, Prague, Austria Trip Intro; Budapest Trip Report, Day 1

Budapest, Prague, and Austria Trip Intro:

We are just back from a great vacation in Budapest, Prague, and Austria (Salzburg with day trip to Fuschl am see, and Vienna with day trip to Melk and the Wachau valley) during the Thanksgiving holidays 2017.

It may appear as a hectic holiday where things may be just a whirl as in the funny old movie : If it's Tuesday, it must be Belgium!! But we had a great time and savored a great flavor of the cities we visited!

Pics below are a sample of the highlights we enjoyed in Budapest...

Hungarian State Opera (Magyar Állami Operaház)

FISHERMAN'S BASTION

0 KM, Hungary

Parliament

Attila József, the best known of modern Hungarian poets

CHAIN BRIDGE

MATTHIAS CHURCH AT FISHERMAN'S BASTION

WHEN TO GO?:

Thanksgiving is a Federal holiday in the US on the last Thursday of November and the following Friday is also a holiday. So it's a 4 day weekend and if we combine with the previous weekend, we get a chunk of 9 days off by taking just Monday-Wednesday off work. Son added on 2 days in the previous week also and we had 11 days to tour around, taking just 5 days off work.

November is not the best month to tour Europe as the weather is cold and gloomy with intermittent rain. Sun sets around 4.30 pm! Many attractions are closed for maintenance. Second part of November is slightly better as Christmas markets start sprouting in various cities. We carefully analyzed all the options open to us and decided it'll be worth our while

WHAT TO SEE?:

We had a great pick of Austrian palaces, castles in Prague and Budapest, State opera houses of Hungary, and Vienna, lovely churches, museums as well as charming country side. Thankfully weather was not too much of a damper.

Our itinerary unfolded like this:

2 nights in Budapest,

2 nights in Prague,

2 nights in Salzburg,

3 nights in Vienna and

last 1 night at Budapest airport hotel for taking the early morning flight back

Basically the vacation was like the map below, excluding the Germany bit.

I have pinned all our necessary sites on this google map. You can zoom in and out and read the info in the bubbles:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1seaxkyVTzALYBxE7Gl9H3klTc5U&ll=48.04858086304432%2C17.049622504754552&z=6

LOGISTICS:

FLIGHTS:

Ideally we would have preferred to use an open jaw flight, flying into one country and out of another. But flights were priced high from Houston, US to Prague or Vienna. We had pretty reasonable rates for a return flight to Budapest. So we settled on that.

TRAINS:

There are very convenient trains connecting Budapest Keleti station, Prague hlavni nadrazi, Salzburg hauptbahnhof and Vienna Hauptbannhof. hlavni nadrazi and hauptbahnhof mean main station in Cesky and German respectively. Prague is Praha and Vienna is Wien in the local languages... important for train sites etc.

We scheduled the longer train journeys first,

Budapest to Prague 6 hour journey was the first part,

followed by Prague to Salzburg. another 6 hour trip.

Salzburg Vienna is 2 ½ hours

Vienna Budapest is also 2 ½ hours.

TRAIN TICKETS:

There are highly discounted tickets available some 3 months in advance. Since we were traveling off season, we managed to get the discounted tickets just a month before our travel date.

Bought the tickets online from the official train sites for each country.

Hungarian Railways (MAV) site www.mavcsoport.hu

Czech Railways website www.cd.cz

Austrian railways www.oebb.at/en/

Westbahn which plies frequent trains between Vienna-Salzburg: https://westbahn.at/en

I've given more details in the report of each part. We would have been better off buying the Budapest to Prague ticket from the Czech site instead of the Hungarian site as the latter can be printed at home.

CURRENCY:

Again, we had to deal with 3 different currencies. Some of our accommodations wanted cash payment, we used ATMs for drawing cash and our credit card for most payments

LOCAL TRANSPORT CARDS:

We did good research on local transport options and bought necessary travel passes. TICKETS HAVE TO BE VALIDATED/TIME STAMPED to avoid huge fines. We had a good map of the transport network and options specific for our itinerary. I've given details in the report of each part.

LANGUAGE:

We learned some travel vocabulary and common courtesy words in Magyar, Cesky. We do already know a little German to get by. It's highly presumptuous to expect to get by with English alone and I'll give details in the report of each part.

We downloaded google translate app for all these languages to be used offline.

With this general intro over, now I'll start with the Budapest part of our trip.

BUDAPEST TRIP REPORT:

DAY 1, November 17, 2017, Friday:

Meeting up at Budapest Airport Ferihegy:

We were flying in from different places. I arrived at Terminal 2B at 9.30 am, went through passport control, collected my bag and waited in the area just outside. There were plenty of chairs

Son was flying Houston-Toronto-Vienna-Budapest; cleared passport control before boarding the Budapest flight at Vienna, from within the Schengen common border landed at Terminal 2A Budapest airport at 10.45 am. He had only a cabin bag and walked in search of me as we had planned, saw me seated at the area outside Terminal 2B. We met up easily!

We knew the public transport options. It is 21km from airport to our apartment at the Gozdu Udvar, we could take 100E Bus to Deak Ferenc ter, then walk 800m. It is a 900 forint ticket, around 3euros. 305 forints=1 euro

There is an "official" taxi company, Fö Taxi at the airport. They have a booth inside the terminal, and will get you to the city center for about 6000-8000 HUF (€22-30 depending on exchange rate and distance).

PUBLIC TRANSPORT:

TICKETS/PASSES: We can purchase tickets or a travel pass from the BKK's customer service points or machines. we can use our Metro ticket to transfer to a different Metro , but cannot use a single ticket to transfer between buses and Metros. Every ticket has to be validated, immediately upon entry into a bus or tram or just before entry to the tracks of the metro. HUGE FINES OTHERWISE.

Travel cards or public transit passes do not have to be validated every time. Details can be found at: http://www.bkv.hu/en/travel_cards

Among the normal passes there is an extremely cost-effective group travel pass. 24 Hour Group Travel Card Valid for 24 hours from the indicated date and time (month, day, hour, minute) for an unlimited number of trips, To be used by up to 5 passengers traveling together.

Price: HUF 3 300 (10.5 euros), obviously advantageous as one single ticket 350; pack of 10: 3000; if you buy from driver 450 forints for single ticket.

The BKK service and info point was right ahead of us, so we bought a 24 hour group card. We had to give a time for the agent to punch in, so we gave 1pm as the start time.

Airport Pickup:

Our accommodation had offered airport pickup for flat 25 euros. They wanted our flight details and phone number. As explained before we were arriving by different flights and it complicated matters. Our phone did not have roaming too. We told them to be at the airport by 11.30. Son was able to log in to the airport wifi and use skype to call their phone and tell them to meet us at Terminal 2B arrivals area. They came up in 5 minutes, meanwhile son had drawn local money from the ATM there. We were soon on our way and arrived at our reception.

After checkin, the receptionist walked us to our apartment across the road in another building.

Gozsdu-udvar Apartments:

Gozsdu-udvar ( Gozsdu Courtyard) comprises seven buildings and their courtyards in the 7th district of Budapest, The building complex was built in 1901 The neighbourhood is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. All the 7 original buildings were part of the Jewish Ghetto that existed from November 1944 to January 1945. Today it is well known of cafés, bars, pubs, galleries, exclusive shops. We found the location convenient and apartment spacious

Reception timings are from 8am to 2am. We needed to arrange a taxi to Keleti station at 6.45 am for our morning train to Prague at 7.30am, when the reception staff will not be around. We also wanted the same transfer service for the penultimate day of our trip 10 days later to pick us up at Keleti station and drop us at our airport hotel. It's hardly 3 km to the station and regular taxi costs around 5 euros. The girl said that they had booked one for a customer and it did not turn up on time. The private transfer service they use for airport pickup/drop is reliable but they do not take up smaller distances. They'll charge 20 euros! We decided to think it through and then confirm.

We had some home made tortillas, tomato relish and cashew sweets,

packed our day bag with our travel pass and started off on our sight seeing agenda.

We had circled relevant stations on the transport map and printed it out. It came in mighty useful.

Hungarian State Opera (Magyar Állami Operaház):

Our first target was Hungarian State Opera Magyar Állami Operaház

Deak Ferenc ter is less than 500m from our apt, we walked up. (Deak is pronounced de, ack, not to rhyme with teak by the way) It's a complicated metro station because three lines intersect.

We looked for metro 1, checked the direction we needed... toward Mexicol ut, got in and got out at Opera station.

Hungarian State Opera Magyar Állami Operaház has Stunning interior, English tours are at 2, 3, 4 pm; Tickets can be purchased in the entrance hall of the Opera House, any time before the tours. HUF 2.990; Photo ticket: HUF 500,-/camera; Mini concert HUF 690,-/person. We were in at 2.15, so could only make the 3 pm tour. We enjoyed the lovely foyer. The tour was quite delayed, but quite interesting.

There were huge crowds and many many different groups being herded around. They did not check the camera pass or mini concert ticket, seems to be an honor system.

In Opera Garnier in Paris, they allow self guided tours...here we spent around almost 2 hours waiting around... kind of ate into our limited sight seeing time!

The mini concert...

Basilica of St Stephen:

We got back to the same metro station, asked the kiosk operator Servoos (Hello), Istavan basilica? And she indicated 1 stop. We took the mtro in the opposite direction, got out after one stop and the Basilica was right in front.

Fifty years in the making, the Basilica of St Stephen is Budapest's largest church. It is dedicated to St. Stephen, the first Christian king of Hungary. His right hand, the country's most important relic, is enshrined in one of the church's chapels. I'll add the video we captured when the relic was lit up

Because of the vicinity of the Danube huge foundations had to be constructed that resulted in an underground cellar almost as large as the subsurface building.

Many art treasures and precious documents survived down there during the second world war.

We can travel by elevator or walk up 302 steps to the terrace around the dome from where we can enjoy a panoramic view of Budapest. We asked the priest but he indicated they had closed the lift at 3.30.

We walked out after some serene moments inside the church.

We wanted to see the fat policeman statue, but lost the way. We walked on toward Erzsébet tér (Elisabeth Square)

Erzsébet tér (Elisabeth Square):

Elisabeth Square, one of the largest green spaces in central Pest, was expanded in the early 2000s and now borders busy Déak Ferenc Square. The square's most interesting sight is the monumental Danube Fountain a beautiful fountain built and designed by the Hungarian architect Miklós Ybl in 1880-1883.

The fountain shows a statue of Danubius, who personifies the river Danube, standing on a dolphin. Below him are three female figures, allegorical representations of tributaries of the Danube: Tisza, Dráva and Sava.

Michael Jackson Memorial Tree:

We saw Michael Jackson Memorial Tree...during his 1994 visit to shoot “HIStory” album the King of Pop stayed in the Royal Suite of the Kempinski Hotel Corvinus Budapest, with windows overlooking Erzsébet Square. MJ’s Magyar fans camped out around the tree in the square’s corner directly beneath the Royal Suite, and the superstar greeted them from his window Michael Jackson returned to Budapest twice amid the 1996 “HIStory” world tour and stayed at the hotel. When news of Michael Jackson’s untimely death spread on June 25th of 2009, his heartbroken fans returned to the corner of Erzsébet Square and held an impromptu vigil. Michael Jackson Memorial Tree has become a permanent landmark,

We saw the Budapest Eye spinning.

We were feeling hungry, walked back to our apt which was close, collecting some grocery(milk, yogurt, fruit juice, bananas, grapes and some chocolates) on the way from the Prima supermarket nearby.

Our intention was to go out after dinner to Hosok Ter and then to Keleti to do a recce for our early morning train trip a day later. I should have bought the ticket from the czech railway site but by mistake I had bought the online tickets from BKK site. The Czech site allows printing at home and this has been accepted by BKK only this year. Hungarian site requires the ticket to be collected from machine at train stations. We also wanted to arrange for our taxi pickup from hotel to train station. We were sleepy and wound up for the day without doing these pending chores.

This report continues here with the account of our day 2:

https://adventuretrav.blogspot.com/2017/12/budapest-trip-report-day-2.html