We visited Memento Park the next
day as part of our Communist tour and it was a major disappointment. First, the
agency screwed up and thus we only managed to do the tour on our second day
instead of the first. Next the tour guide didn’t actually offered any
interesting information and only did a short spiel so we actually spent a lot
of time traveling to hear basically nothing. Memento Park was really just a
park filled with statues from the communist era, and even then, there weren’t
that many statues and it wasn’t even that big. The only thing that was mildly
exciting was the film ‘Life of An Agent’ which explains communist secret
service operations. They also had the Trabant, the East German people’s car but
it wasn’t very well maintained so it was a bit disgusting to get in to take
photos.
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| Communism's dream car |
We followed that up with a
walking tour which was really good, so the day wasn’t spoilt at least. We
learnt that when the communists took over, they only built over the areas which
were destroyed in the war, but left the rest of the buildings untouched, which
was lucky for everyone I guess.
Our walking tour covered both the Buda and the Pest area so we covered
quite a bit of ground. It was
worth it though and we were lucky to have a good guide. We ended the tour up at Castle Hill,
but it was late so we couldn’t enter any of the buildings to have a look-see.
Our guide did recommended that we do the Labyrinth of Buda Castle as they had a
special evening session where you can walk around with an oil lamp in the dark. It
was a bit freaky but also quite fun, we had a few scares and a few laughs so
still worth it in the end.
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| What's left of Stalin |
We finished the day with a cruise
down the Danube River. There were a few companies running cruises but we went
with Legenda Cruise as it provided personal headsets as well as 2 glasses of
champagne. The evening cruise was definitely a good idea as it provides a very
different view of Budapest and it was wonderful to see the buildings all lit up
at night. Parliament, which was supposedly modeled after Westminster, was
really grand and absolutely stunning. Gellert Statue up above on Gellert Hill
was also pretty imposing at night. The only thing about an eveing cruise was
that we didn’t have time to visit Margaret Island, which was a pity. Oh well,
perhaps next time.
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| Romancing down the River Danube |
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| Hungary's answer to Westminster |
One of the very last things we
did before leaving Budapest, was of course to visit its famous baths!!! There
were two famous baths, Gellert and Szechenyi. We chose Szechenyi partly cos we
couldn’t find Gellert, haha… Szechenyi is the largest thermal spring bath
complex not only in Budapest but in Europe as well. We went there early but
apparently not early enough, it was crazy crowded and almost impossible to book
a massage with them. In the end we managed to find some other massage within
the complex but it was privately run so it was a bit more expensive than what
Szechenyi charges. The massage was weird though as they had only one woman
masseur with the rest being men. Obviously I requested for the woman since it
would have been too weird to get a guy masseur. There were supposed to be three
outdoor pools, with two for soaking and one for serious swimming. One of the
soaking pools was closed for maintenance so it was a bit crowded at the other
pool. There were also fifteen indoor pools so while it was fun to keep dipping
into different pools, it also got a bit confusing walking around the place. We
seemed to be the only Chinese there and sometimes people were really staring at
us, still it was a pretty fun thing to do. Definitely recommended to buy
tickets beforehand (you should be able to buy them from any hotel) to avoid the
queues, otherwise just go really early or late.
With one last dip in the pool, we
ended our journey in Budapest and headed for Levoca for some knights in shining
armor!
