We started our day by visiting the same square we were at the night before to take photos of Buda Castle and Fisherman’s Bastion. We took the metro there and of course, the stop we spent probably an hour looking for was right on the square as we had suspected. We took the bus over and across the Chain Bridge and got off at the first stop since we weren’t sure which stop we needed. We walked up a ton of stairs to get to Buda Castle. When we finally got to the top, we realized that the Budapest Wine Festival was starting today and throughout the week (5 days total). We had originally planned to visit the bath houses but decided it would be worth it to come back later for the festival instead. We grabbed lunch at a restaurant next to Buda Castle and split a prosciutto sandwich and a greek salad. I’m not sure why we ordered a greek salad. Neither of us are big fans of black olives. The food was decent nonetheless. We walked over to Fisherman’s Bastion and Matthias Church to look around. The architecture and views of the city are amazing here. We decided to go in to Matthias Church, which I happened to like the best so far from the churches we have visited. Afterwards, we walked over to the Labyrinth to check it out, but we were both exhausted from walking so we opted not to walk through it, though at least we had a chance to see a little bit of it at the entrance. We then walked back towards Fisherman’s Bastion to see the view from the bottom (even better of course). By the way, we realized the bus would have taken us all the way to the top of the hill so we never really needed to climb those stairs. We found the Metro to take us to the other side of the river (underground beneath the river) to go see the Parliament Building. It was impressive. We also saw the guards performing some ritual (a similar ritual also happened near Buda Castle). We then walked over to see the bronze shoes on the Danube River, which is really sad for what it represents. We took the tram back to the square to catch the metro back to our hostel. Andy wanted to ride all forms of public transit. We stopped at our hostel to reload. Eventually, we found ourselves back where we started our day, at Buda Castle for the wine tasting. The cost was a flat admission rate, and then you pay each vendor money for a taste. I think there were over 200 Hungarian wines there. We were overwhelmed, so we decided to try the award-winning wines listed in the information booklet. We even had a vendor toast us (or so I think) when we tried the wine known as the Taste of Hungary. Since we were already there, we decided to have dinner as well. There were food vendors everywhere but we found a food court similar to the setup as the food vendors at the square the night before. It must be a thing. Again, delicious food. We had goose leg with vegetables, and potatoes with a funny side of meat. I wonder if we should start eating goose back home. We sure have enough of them. The Wine Festival was a wonderful find we happened to stumble upon. I forget to mention, after trying one bad bottle of still water and one carbonated water, we finally found the right brand (NaturAgua with pink cap). Andy’s reaction to the best tasting water ever (in Hungary) was funny. We had also stopped at a food stand right outside our hostel for a cinnamon pastry type cake. Smelled and tasted great!
Going on and on