Tag: Europe

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Munich, Last Day

We took a couple different routes on the Hop-Off-Hop-Off buses so I feel like we really got to see a lot of the city. That includes Marienplatz, St. Michael’s church, the eternal flame monument for those lost in WWII, Nymphenburg Palace, Olympic Park where we went to the top of the tower, a market where we saw a maypole,  Odeonsplatz, and the English Gardens. The gardens were beautiful, and we stumbled across a place where apparently a lot of people go to surf the little waves coming out from under the bridge.

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Train to Munich

Spent most of the day on the 7 hour train ride which was a new experience for me and everything went very smoothly so it was very good. When we got to Munich we went to the Hofbräuhaus beer hall where we had some very good wiener schnitzel and strudel. It began raining while we were there so we went back to the hotel and called it an early night.

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Last Day in Budapest

We visited the Shoes on the Danube, a memorial there to honor those lost in WWII. We also went through the Labyrinth, naturally made, but now used in connection to Dracula; they were quite creepy with very few lights, fog, and opera music echoing throughout accompanied by wax figures as a masquerade ball. We took the funicular down Buda Hill, rode the Budapest Eye, and as we were sitting having a milkshake to cool down, a random parade came by as there are multiple festivals happening around here, but what mostly caught my attention was the guy having to wear a fur coat in 90 degrees. We had a great dinner where we cooked our own meat on a lava rock (I had some Mangalica Pork, mostly because I was really intrigued by the concept of eating a fuzzy pig). And then we were supposed to take an overnight train tonight to Munich, but we ended up missing that one, but we were able to get another train to Munich tomorrow morning and a hotel room in the same hotel we stayed in last night so it all worked out. Plus we were glad to be able to take a shower after sweating all day.

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Margaret Island

The cruise is over but we are still hanging around Europe for a little while, so we checked into our hotel where we got a very fancy room for just one night. We explored the city a little more and visited the oldest church in Budapest, the Roman ruins of which can be seen through glass in the floor of the new church built over it. We took a tour of Margaret Island on some electric scooters – the traffic was crazy but it was quite a fun way to get around. Margaret Island is located in between Buda and Pest (on one side of the Danube is Buda and the other is Pest – the two cities joined a while ago, first being called Pestbuda, but since Buda was the previous capital they decided to put that first). The island is so beautiful, basically just a giant park as there are no residences and no cars are allowed to drive around, and it contains an English rose garden, a Japanese garden, a zoo, and a waterpark, as well as a fountain that does a light show in the evening and lots of green space.

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Hiking Gellert Hill

So we went to Gellert Hill and went in the church that is inside the hill (for the rest of the day’s activities and pictures of the church search “History in Budapest”). I wanted to climb up to the cross (which at the time I forgot was pretty much directly above the church/cave opening). I assumed I would just be able to follow a path up but I was sorely mistaken; a couple feet into the trek up the hill, the path split in multiple directions and all the way up there were many different paths you could take and they were all paved so there was not one correct one – I saw one sign, but it was in Hungarian so not very helpful. I figured “up” was a pretty safe direction so I just continued that way exploring some of the different paths. I got to one intersection and was standing there deciding which way to go (and catching my breath), but was about to go the wrong way when a Hungarian woman told me that there were good views the other way, so I assumed I had finally made it to the cross. I again was sorely mistaken. I had accidentally climbed all the way to the top of the large hill to Budapest’s Statue of Liberty – not what I was expecting, but the views were absolutely fantastic. On the hike up there I only saw like 4 other people, but at the top there were many other tourists coming from all different paths all around the hill, so I assume any of the separate paths I could have taken would have eventually gotten me to the same place. But alas, even with the very rewarding views I had not accomplished what I had set out to do and visit the cross. I looked at some pictures I had taken before we started up the hill and then realized how far away I actually was and started wandering back down on different paths and eventually found my way to the cross. It was a fun detour and added adventure to the day, plus I think it’s a funny story.

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History in Budapest

We visited the Rock Hospital which was not what I had expected but was extremely interesting. They didn’t allow us to take photos inside, but they had wax statues all through the tunnels in the cave to represent how it was used in WWII as a hospital and later as a potential nuclear shelter for the threat during the Cold War. We went to Gellert Hill and visited the church built into the stone, and then I hiked up to the top and the views were spectacular (you can see a more detailed story of that adventure by searching “Hiking Gellert Hill”). We also walked through a local market (located in a very large, grand looking building) and got some fresh fruit. And finally, as it is the last night of the cruise, they led us into town to the street filled with all the nightlife and bars and we hung out with some of the friends we have made.

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Bratislava & Budapest

We had a short stop in Bratislava, a cute little town hit hard by multiple wars, and you can see the newly renovated buildings right next to those damaged by war. Some of those that haven’t been renovated yet have numbers next to some of the damaged parts, because they want to preserve some of that history in which the buildings were destroyed, so those parts will not get renovated. They also have multiple statues representing their freedom, like Man At Work, and there is a compass embedded in the ground with many different large cities from around the world and how far away they are. In St. Mark’s Cathedral they have glass in the ground to show the crypts below. We then had a long boat ride to our final cruise stop, Budapest. Everyone gathered on the deck to watch as we sailed into the beautiful city lit up at night.

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Vienna

We spent all day in Vienna today. Walked around and took a Hop-On-Hop-Off bus tour to be able to see more of the city, had lunch in one of the many cafes, stopped by St. Stephen’s Cathedral and saw the floating rocks, and then visited Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and Strauss (they have a special section in the cemetery for the composers so they can all hang out together). We also got to take a tour of Schönbrunn Palace after hours; you can see the extravagant palace with beautiful (and huge maze-like) garden, but some of the extravagance is not what it appears (most of the gold inside is only a gold leaf coating so it is cheaper than it appears, and there is a whole porcelain room except that only 2 things are actually made of porcelain while the rest is just wood painted to look similar). Even though they didn’t have a lot extra money, they took a lot of pains to make it look like they did so visitors would be discouraged from attacking this “rich” army. There are also paintings from Empress Maria Theresa’s wedding, and every person has a small number beside them and are labelled as to who they are; Mozart is in one of the paintings, but he was actually never there and was added in later (bit of old school Photoshop) once he got famous because Maria Theresa wanted people to think he was there.

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Melk & Dürnstein

We made a quick stop in Melk and walked through the abbey, then cruised through the Wachau Valley (a UNESCO world heritage site) to get to Dürnstein where we went to a wine tasting. My young tastebuds do not really enjoy the taste of alcohol so I didn’t really like any of the wines, but it was a fun experience. I do quite enjoy that we are able to make stops in these little towns instead of just being in the big cities with tons of tourists, they are quite quaint and beautiful. Also, apricots are really big around here, so I got an Austrian cake sort of thing filled with an apricot spread and at the wine tasting they had an apricot dessert paired with an apricot rum.

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Sailing to Linz

Most of the day was sailing, and we learned about what a lock was and got to experience what it was like to go through one. Since we were onboard for a while, they had a foosball tournament and I competed with newfound friend and fellow youngster (most of the people on the cruise were couples ranging from honeymooners to 60s) Alexis from Montreal, and we made it to the semi-finals but lost by one point after making an amazing comeback. When we stopped in Linz we took a tour around the city – inside the town hall the floor is covered with a map of Linz as seen from above in a helicopter –  and we went into some air raid shelters built during WWII. Apparently even most of the locals don’t know they are there, and a woman on one of the previous tours told the tour guide that she was actually born in there. We went in the “luxurious” part of the tunnels layered with bricks because that was where the officers went during the air raids, but most of them are just the plain sand carved out of the hill. They have some original stuff in there still too, like old tracks for the wagons, the original electricity lines, and original pipes they used to bring fresh air in.