Paige snoozed until after 8. We started our day by walking to the Cave Church, after we ate breakfast at the hotel. 

This is the Google history:

“It was built into a cave in 1926 and was the seat of Hungary’s Pauline order until 1951, when the priests were imprisoned by the communists and the cave sealed off. It was reopened and reconsecrated in 1992. Behind the chapel is a monastery with neo-Gothic turrets that are visible from Liberty Bridge.”

I believe that I also read that Lourdes, France inspired the construction of the church. 

We attended the 11:00 Mass which we did not understand one word of but it was beautiful with the cantor playing the organ. 

We wanted to see the view from the Liberty Woman statue at the citadel so we trekked up the hill, the same hill the cave church is built into. It is called Gellert Hill and was only 0.7 miles. Did I mention that Budapest is very hot? It has been 85 each day.  We tried to stay in the shade and it really was not bad. Once we reached to top we quickly found out that the statue and the Citadel are under a major reconstruction phase. We were able to walk to the other path to get a great view of Buda and Pest from the top of the hill. 

Next up was the Buda Castle. I wanted to see the ST Mattias church.  Sadly we ran out of time bc we had a 2 pm lunch reservation at Laszlo’s favorite restaurant, 4.5 miles away. We took our very first bolt. 

I ordered the typical delish Hungarian meat soup with pasta and vegetables. I added a little paprika and hot pepper zing. 

I got the grilled chicken and salad and Paige had a delish pork dish that the waiter had him order. Our dessert was a Hungarian Somloi Galuska which is sponge cake soaked in something, with a rich chocolate sauce that had grapes in it. It was so yummy. 

So how do we get back? I got the Hungarian go app thinking we were taking a metro but when I asked the waiter he said it was a bus and our only option and we could pay on the bus. 

So we couldn’t pay on the bus. The driver said just sit, I think.  I tried to download the app and I registered but I ran out of time to pay bc we had to get off. The second bus driver had us pay but we could not pay with a cc and we did not have Ft money.  A man on the bus said give €4.  The driver was starting to get upset with us but it worked out lol. 

Idomeneo, re di Creta (Idomeneo, King of Crete) our very first opera. We got nosebleed, very inexpensive seats 1 & 2 on the end, in case we didn’t like it so we could easily bolt. 

The Hungarian State Opera House is stunning.  We had fun dressing up some. I did not wear my usual green merino wool sun hoody lol. 

After we made it to the 3rd floor, which was 9 flights of stairs. We tried two Hungarian homemade liquors. Unicum and Palinka (plum).  Unicum is herbal and tasted very much like an Amaro and the plum Palinka tasted like a brandy.  

The Opera itself was super interesting. It was sung in Italian and had English and Hungarian subtitles and the whole plot of the story in the beginning was in English. 

They modernized  the set and it was very short only 2.5 hours. The Opera house was so hot and both Paige and I had major hot flashes. 

King Neptune was nude. That was a highlight lol. Paige wasn’t sure and he had to put his glasses on!

Per Google “The Budapest Opera House was built between 1875 and 1884, with the Vienna Opera House in mind, but under orders from the King not to outdo it in size. The Opera’s architect was Miklós Ybl, who also designed St. Stephen’s Basilica, among many other edifices.”

We are leaving beautiful Budapest by train (this time an Austrian line) as first timers to Vienna. We have hopes to be pleasantly surprised if it arrives on time.   We have nothing planned for tomorrow. 

This adventure deserves its own post.  

We left the hotel after we ate. We had zero issues driving mostly on the toll road.  Customs was super quick crossing back to Croatia. 

We arrived 215 pm to the airport and got an uber for our very first time in Europe. It shaved about 25 mins off the bus plus we would have had to walk a mile from the bus to the train station. 

Like children we learned from our mistakes in Rome and went to the ticket person to ask her to read our ticket since we didn’t know the language it was in and thought it was Czech but later when Jarrett had chat gpt read it, it’s Hungarian. I know I knew when I booked it a while back but I forgot. 

She explained that we had to get on the train then take a bus then get back on the train. Of course we both freaked out.  Our  jaws dropped and we both said BUS? I repeated it back to her, “Did you just say we had to get off of this train, get on a bus, get off the bus, then get in another train?” She said yes.  “Very organized.”  I asked her to write it down.  Then we stood In disbelief and wanted to ask her to repeat it  again but she literally ignored us, she started talking to a co worker and would not make eye contact l . Then we walked away and she smiled and waved goodbye.

We then gave ourselves a pep talk and checked Rome2rio and it said direct.  We agreed that clearly she made a mistake even though we both had two train tickets hahaha. 

We got on the train and asked again and sure enough, we had to get off and take a bus.We were on the train for about 15 minutes, the train stopped and everyone got off the train and trekked across the tracks and boarded buses.  Second time this trip to cross train tracks. Hahahaha. We made friends with two New Zealand blokes,  who were equally confused. We texted our boys and Jarrett was worried and had chat gpt confirm the ticket and warned us not go get on the wrong train but we assured him we asked many times.

The bus lasted almost two hours and we drove to a town called Koprivnica, which is super close to the Hungarian border. We boarded a second train at 630 pm. It was a cool private cabin with six seats and we didn’t  have any passengers next to us. 

My guess is that the train tracks are being worked on bc when I tried to book this a long time ago it mentioned that they were working on the tracks.  They must do this train-bus-train route every day! 

All in all our worries were for nothing. For the bus, that is.

It was honestly the slowest oldest train. The charging station did not work and we had no WiFi. About two hours away we started to have maintenance issues. After five suited men came on the train and a few men dressed with vests waved a flashlight, we started up again. 

The ticket man came by and I asked what the problem was and he said a lot of  words in English that made no sense then said 40 min delay. 

I did want to come back and see how long the train takes when it’s really direct but honestly I won’t take the Hungarian trains again. 

On a side note we did have fun playing cards. 

Fun day for sure !!!