Eger, Hungary

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We have been looking forward to going to Eger for a long time! We knew that we needed to find time to visit this smaller Hungarian town.

Where We Stayed

Agria Retur Panzio – This nice pension was a little bit far from the train station so we had to lug our bags all the way through Old Town to get there. However, we were glad that we stayed here. We had a pretty sizable room with a private bathroom. There was a shared kitchen and meal area that was quite pleasant. We were only a few minutes walk from Old Town and the town Minaret was practically right outside our door!  The shower was unique though.

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What We Did

Valley of the Beautiful Women – This is why we traveled to Eger! Just over the hill, about a 25 min walk from Old Town, is the Valley of Beautiful Women. We’re not sure why the name, especially because we saw almost no one in our time in the valley. It was a miserably rainy day. However, it was still quite enjoyable because the reason you visit here is because it is full of about 50 wine cellars, all right next to each other. Tastes are free and glasses were as reasonable as 100 forint (about $0.50)! We really enjoyed striking up a conversation with a bored Hungarian working in the first cellar. We chatted about wine, Hungary, language, and her life. We also enjoyed trying the Eger special wine: Egri Bikaver or Bull’s Blood. The wine gets its name because in 1552, the people of Eger withstood a siege by the Ottoman Empire for a month. 2000 men from Eger against 100,000. They held! The king Istvan Dobo helped his troops by giving them wine which stained their beards red. This lead to rumors through the Turkish army that the men of Eger were so strong and vicious because they were drinking the blood of bulls! Every cellar has their own variant of this famous Eger wine. They also will fill up a plastic bottle of wine for cheap prices. We filled our 1 liter nalgene bottle of our favorite wine for only 500 forint (a little over $2.00!!) There are many cellars to try, but the rain and the alcohol caused us to only get to 3. We wish we lived close by cause we would go back regularly!

Eger Castle – As we mentioned, Eger is famous for withstanding a siege from the Turks. The castle is beautiful. There are a lot of things to do in the castle, a few museums, etc. However, we were mostly interested in the views. Also, we only had a small window at the end of a day when it wasn’t pouring. You do have to pay to walk the grounds, so we spent some time exploring the walls and enjoying the views. You can see the ruins of the first cathedral which was built on the same hill around 1000 AD. Eger exists because it grew around this cathedral.

Climb the Minaret
So, we talked about how Eger withstood the siege from the Turks. It was amazing and heroic, and, understandably, Eger is very proud of this point of its history. Unfortunately, the first siege was in 1552. The Turks came back in 1596, and this time Eger did not hold out. Eger was under Turkish rule for about 100 years. The minaret is a remnant from this time. It is an amazingly narrow, tall tower. There is nothing to do but climb the tower. We didn’t count, but our Lonely Planet says that there are 97 stairs in this narrow staircase. It winds up to the top and you almost have to crawl up on your hands and knees to contort your body through the narrow passage. Once on the viewing platform, the only thing you can do is shuffle sideways with your back to the tower. Della couldn’t even fit up there with her backpack. We did have some lovely views of the town and castle. The sun even decided to make an appearance!

Eger Basilica
Eger boasts the 2nd largest Basilica in the country, and it was huge. We chose not to pay for the special, daily organ concert, but we did find time to enter later. It is beautiful!

 

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The Eger Basilica

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Inside the Eger Basilica

 

City Under the City
The other cool thing about the Basilica is that you can enter the City Under the City right outside. This is actually a network of tunnels that functioned as the archbishop’s enormous wine cellar. This was from the days when church taxes were paid in wine! We did a tour here as it is the only way to see them and it was in Hungarian unfortunately. Though they did give us a nice English guide which gave us information about each of the things our guide was talking about. The only thing we missed was understanding the jokes and being able to ask questions.

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An explanation of mold and how it is necessary for wine storage?

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City under the City. Not any real wine.

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Exit Point Game – So, we had heard about these Escape Room games in Budapest. The premise is simple: They lock you in a room and you have 60 min to figure out how to escape. You will use clues within the room, logic, and other tricks to open locks, solve riddles, and unlock doors. It’s basically a chance for you to channel your inner Indiana Jones. We had known that we wanted to try one of these games, but couldn’t quite get around to figuring it out in Budapest. But we were quite excited to see that one of the companies had recently expanded to Eger! We walked by their office in town, which was only a few min away from our pension. We had no trouble scheduling an appointment because they had just opened 2 weeks ago. There is a hint button, which we never used. However, you are on video the entire time so the woman watching us gave us a few unsolicited hints when she could see we were stuck. We got out right before our 60 min were up. However, we do believe that if had a bit longer, we could have figured it out with no hints! It was a blast!

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What We Ate

We found that a lot of places in Eger (also in Budapest) offered a special “daily menu.” This menu normally got you a soup and some sort of meal. We were excited that these typically cost about 900 forint (less than $4.00)! We ate at a couple of different restaurants with this deal. The food wasn’t particularly memorable, but it was tasty!

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Final Thoughts

We were certainly glad that we went a little bit off the main tourist track to visit Eger. It was a beautiful old town. Unfortunately, a bit of the beauty was marred because they were completely redoing the main old town square.  Despite this, there is plenty of things to do to occupy your time for a couple of days. We wish we could have stayed longer. We also wish we could have been more efficient, however, the bad, rainy weather made some of the potential sightseeing unpleasant. Overall, we really enjoyed Eger and wish we could do it again!

Budapest, Hungary

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After saying goodbye to Slovakia, we headed south to Hungary. Our first stop was the capital city of Budapest.

Where We Stayed

Paprika Hostel – For our first few nights, we picked out this hostel online because the reviews made it seem like a low-key place (unlike a lot of other places in Budapest, who seem to be advertising how crazy they will be). We booked in a four-bed dorm room and shared with just one other person all three nights. The facilities were nice except another toilet would have been great), but we never quite clicked with the rest of the people staying here.

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Pal’s Hostel – For our last two nights, we decided we wanted the comfort and privacy of our own room, so we found a private room in this place. Even though it calls itself a hostel, it actually feels more like small apartments. We had to share bathroom and kitchen facilities, but only with one other couple. We really enjoyed our stay in this spacious room – and the location right next to the main basilica was amazing as well!

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What We Did

Budapest Free Walking Tour – It’s basically become our standard practice to take a free walking tour of a city on our first day there to get a feel for it. In Budapest, there were a few different companies, but we went with the one that had the best reviews. This overview tour started on the Pest side (Budapest is actually the union of Buda on the west of the Danube and Pest on the east), where we saw a few different squares and the beautiful St. Stephen’s Basilica. We then crossed the Chain Bridge over into Buda. We climbed up the steps to the Royal Palace, and then the tour finished at Matthias Church. From here, we walked down on our own through the Fisherman’s Bastion scenic overlook and back over into Pest (where our hostel was).

Free Pub Tour – Budapest is known for its nightlife, so we decided to get a little crazy and join a tour of some of the different watering holes. The free walking tour company offers a free pub tour – they make sure to emphasize that it is a tour, and not a pub crawl where the point is just to get drunk. A guide led us to three different places, and at each one we got a free shot! The last stop on the tour was one of Budapest’s famous “ruin bars” – an abandoned building that has been turned into a large bar (and usually with random decorations). We had so much fun that after the our was over, some of the group even went on to another ruin bar!

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Szimpla Ruin Bar

Free Communism Walking Tour – We definitely love our free walking tours! The tour company also offered a special tour that was a little different than the overview. It was less about seeing sights and more about hearing the stories of what life was like in Budapest during the Communist regime (with appropriate backdrops). We felt like we learned a lot and would highly recommend this!

 

Margaret Island Fountain Show – Our hostel gave us a tip that every night at 9, the big fountain on the southern end of Margaret Island puts on a light, music and water show. We grabbed a bottle of wine and headed over there. We were definitely impressed with the hour-long spectacle. This also gave us a good view point of the Parliament and Castle by night!

 

Watching the Cowboys Game

Central Market Hall – On our own, we walked down to this giant market housed in a pretty old building. The market was closing, so we didn’t have time to do much shopping, but we did manage to grab a lángos, which is basically just fried dough topped with a variety of things. We overheard someone say that the traditional topping was just cheese and sour cream, so we went with that.

Walk Around Parliament – Also on our own, we walked around the massive and impressive Hungarian Parliament building. We had thought about doing a tour of the inside, but it is actually pretty expensive. Also near the Parliament on the Danube we found a memorial to the Jews who in 1944-45 were killed on that spot so that their bodies would be washed away in the river. The shoes symbolize the fact that they were often ordered to take off their shoes beforehand.

Szechenyi Baths – One other thing that Budapest is known for is its baths. There are many springs in the area surrounding Budapest, and these are often used to create public baths. We went to the largest at Szechenyi. We spent a whole day exploring the different thermal pools, saunas and outdoor pools. Definitely very relaxing!

Where We Ate

Compared to other cities we have been to, we actually found it quite hard to find traditional local food in this city! Most of our meals were not Hungarian. We had Thai food, Turkish kebabs, and even Mexican food! On our last night we did finally eat at one place that offered a multi-course menu of Hungarian specialties.

Final Thoughts

We enjoyed our time in Budapest. There are a lot of different sights to see, and certainly a lot of different ways to have fun. A little more touristy than Krakow and Bratislava, but not as bad as Prague. We’d recommend a visit!

Sports Fan Abroad: NFL Opening Week in Budapest

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As you may know, Eric is a pretty big sports fan. He knew that coming on this trip would limit his ability to follow his favorite teams back in the US, but he still would like to try when possible.

Eric’s favorite sport to watch is football, and his favorite team is the Dallas Cowboys. We were in Budapest on the first Sunday of NFL games, so he researched where it might be possible to watch the game. We were on our way to a British pub that might have the game on when we stumbled onto something even better: a Hungarian American sports bar! We knew we were in the right place when  we saw that it was called “The Endzone” and that there were people in NFL jerseys outside. Here’s a website for the bar (in Hungarian): http://www.endzonebbqpub.hu/

It wasn’t just Americans in the bar either… we did meet one, but there were quite a few fans speaking Hungarian as well. The favorite team of the bar seemed to be the Giants. Maybe it is because Europeans seem to really like New York.

We ended up leaving at halftime because it was after midnight, and the Cowboys were playing terribly. It was still a fun first experience of watching the NFL in a foreign country!

The American flag was a hint that we were in the right place

The American flag was a hint that we were in the right place

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You can kinda see a Broncos pennant up there.

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Notice the Giants Helmet

 

Random Superficial Thoughts About Central Eastern Europe

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1. Everyone smokes everywhere, all the time.
2. There are a million nuns here!

Hiking in the Tatras

Hiking in the Tatras

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3. It’s shocking how many skinny women there are around given their cultural cuisine and cheap beer!
4. These women are champs of high heels… On cobblestones!
5. Prague is the city of rude servers.
6. Olomouc is the city of brides.
7. Krakow is the city of nuns.
8. Slovakia is super humid.
9. PDA is huge. I feel like I am constantly in line at an amusement park!
10. The showers here are different. They almost all are in a tub and the shower head does not hang above you. It is conducive to shorter, more efficient showers perhaps because it encourages you to shut off the water any time you need to use your hands to soap or shampoo.

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11. It is really hard to find broccoli. We got used to broccoli being a staple veggie at home. We have to be lucky to find it in supermarkets here!
12. The street lights go red, yellow, green!! They also do green, yellow, red of course.

Budget: Slovakia

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This is one of our Budget series of posts to give you an idea of how much we spent traveling around the world. Here we will look at Slovakia. Check our posts to see what kind of activities we did and where we stayed!

In Slovakia we used the Euro. We converted to US dollars using the current conversion rates at the time of our visit. It was approximately 1.3 euro to one dollar.

Total Spent (7 days): $564.55

We normally break down into the following categories:

Accommodation: $268.72

We stayed at one hostel in a dorm, one pension, and one AirBnb.

Activities: $31.68

We didn’t have many activity expenses this month! We stayed in the mountains and did hiking which was free. This included tips on a free walking tour in Bratislava, entrance to Spis Castle, and a fee to visit a church in Levoca.

Food: $165.02

We ate out approximately 1 to 2 meals per day. The hostel that we stayed in for some of these days provided breakfast.

Miscellaneous: $8.18

This included buying postcards and our Zumba class.

Transportation: $90.94

We traveled by buses and trains.

This divides out to $80.65/day which, thankfully, is under our $100/day budget. Yay!

 

Bratislava, Slovakia

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We weren’t sure that we were going to make it to Bratislava, but ultimately decided it was worth it. We needed a place to stop over on our way from Zdiar to Budapest, and Bratislava was on the way. Also, we read up on Bratislava and it sounded like it had plenty of cool sights of its own!

Where We Stayed

Airbnb Apartment – We were lucky to find a convenient, inexpensive Airbnb. We were about a 15 minute walk to the east of Old Town. We enjoyed our apartment as it was on the first floor and had all the conveniences we needed, including a washer! The washer was a bit of an adventure though. We couldn’t get it to work, and ended up having to call our host. It turned out that some work had been done in the room and the water was turned off. It was hard to figure though because the sink was in the same room and the water to it was fine, but eventually managed to get it going. Our host thoughtfully provided a drying rack, iron, and hair dryer! He also included fruit and supplies for breakfast!

What We Did

Free Walking Tour – We feel like we’ve become pros at the free walking tour. What a great thing to do in many of the cities we’ve visited! We like to do the tour on our first full day because they often give us a good lay of the land and help us orient ourselves. Like many of the others, our guide was great and gave us a good overview of the city. We enjoyed this particular tour because our guide gave us a little bit more of the recent history (since communism) and a bit of the current political situation. Namely, she explained that the country was moving in a capitalist direction and many of the young people agreed. She did state that there was a significant population of mostly older people who believed that they had been better off during communism. Their unemployment rate in Slovakia is high, mostly in the country. In Bratislava itself, it was not that bad.

We started out in the Hviezdoslavo Square, admiring the Carlson hotel and then the Opera House. We then headed into Bratislava’s small Old Town. We stopped by the statue of “The Watcher” peeping out of a manhole, then to the main square, where we found a cannonball embedded in a clock tower. We walked out of Old Town through the St Michael’s Gate (and found the second narrowest building in Europe. which is now a Kebob shop). Our next stop was near the Trinitarian church where we also looked up at the castle but did not walk to it. We then walked past the Presdient’s residence and the Slovak National Uprising square. We stopped at the Art Noveau “blue church”, then our final stop was at a small square where a communist uprising occurred.

Walk to the Bratislava Castle – The Castle is up on a hill overlooking the town of Bratislava. It was destroyed in the early 1800s by fire and then was not restored until 1953, during communism. Due to this, it was not restored lavishly and today is pretty simple. It still is impressive and offers great views of the rest of the city.

Zumba – We were so excited to participate in our second Zumba Round the World class. Read about it here!

Where We Ate

Slovak Pub – We followed a recommendation and visited the Slovak Pub for dinner our first night. We enjoyed the many rooms relating to Slovakian history as well as the delicious food. We ate a combo platter of the Slovak national dish of sheep cheese halusky, sheep cheese pierogi, and cabbage halusky. Halusky is small thick noodles, kinda like gnocchi. Here in Slovakia, they are normally covered with cheese and bacon. As a dessert, we had sweet dumplings filled with blueberry and covered with cocoa powder- YUM!

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Zumba Round the World: Bratislava

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After almost a month of Zumba withdrawal, we were able to find another convenient class! We spent two nights in Bratislava, Slovakia. Luckily, we were able to find a class quite close to our Airbnb. Even more lucky, it turned out that it was Daniela Cavojec Cesnekova.

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She is not only a ZES (Zumba Education Specialist), but the very first Zumba instructor in Slovakia. Needless to say, her class was excellent! Lots of people and energy! We felt a little clumsy actually as it was clear that we were two of only three non-regulars in the class! We warmed up with Shakira’s Dare (La La La). Then we had a good variety after that. We feel fortunate to have been able to go to this class!

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Wow! It was great to get back in the Zumba saddle, and we were definitely feeling out of Zumba shape!

Check out a video of Daniela! It was a great class!

 

Check out the rest of our Zumba Round The World posts.

Levoča and Spiš Castle, Slovakia

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One of things we were most looking forward to in Slovakia was visiting Spiš Castle. We had originally planned to do it as a day trip from our hostel the Ginger Monkey in Zdiar, but we were there over a holiday weekend and the buses weren’t running nearly as often as we would have liked. This meant that it was not likely that we could make it there and back in a day with a reasonable amount of time to spend at this amazing UNESCO heritage site. So, at almost the last minute, we decided to move to Levoča, a town that was quite a bit closer to the castle. We are glad we decided to do this as Levoča is quite a nice, small, not too touristy town.

Where We Stayed

Pension Oaza – We quite enjoyed this pension, especially after staying in the dorm in Zdiar. We had a very large room all to ourselves. We had plenty of space to spread out, a refrigerator and microwave, and our very own bathroom! The woman who owned the pension was kind and offered us homebaked goodies. She also told us to grab some of her many tomatoes growing in her garden. It was quite a nice location too, located midway between the main train station and old town.

Our room came with its own table
The view out of our window

What We Did

Old Town Levoča and Church of Saint James – We enjoyed visiting this small old town square. We visited in the late afternoon so we didn’t go into any of the museums, however, we did enter the Church of St. James. The Church is UNESCO listed and is famous for having the tallest altar in the world. We paid 4 euros to enter, but were quite disappointed that the altar was under renovation so covered by scaffolding. Also, there were no pictures allowed inside. We did enjoy some of the other carvings though, done by the famous Master Pavol. Levoča is also unique within Slovakia because it is still surrounded by most of its original city wall. We particularly enjoyed walking around town observing the wall and imagining its past.

Streets of Levoca
Church of St. James and Town Hall
Church of St. James, the outside was also being renovated
The Cage of Shame, used to shame women caught outside after curfew. What?
Walking along the city wall
The inside and the outside of the wall

Spiš Castle – Spiš Castle is the real reason we came to Levoča in the first place. We had to take a bus to the town of Spišské Podhradie which is situated in the valley right beneath the Spiš Castle (this leaves from Levoča regularly). Even approaching the town in the bus, you are struck by the enormous size and majesty of the castle.

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The bus drops you off in the middle of town, so you will need to do a bit of walking to reach the castle. We headed out of town, following the signs for Castle parking. Strangely, there were almost no cars in the parking lot, but we did see a path heading up towards the castle. We followed and enjoyed the sights while hiking up the surprisingly steep hill. We also were surprised to see big trucks driving past us on the grass up to the castle. We followed them and entered the castle through a lower back gate. We later realized that we had only been allowed to enter there because it was open for the trucks who appeared to be bringing equipment in to set up some sort of stage. The normal entrance is on the far side of the hill, away from the town.

One car in the parking lot
The amazing hike up
The trucks going up and down the mountain
the back door!

We were honest though, and still paid our entrance fee even though we had entered through a back door. The entrance fee did include the use of an audio guide (free as long as you returned it within 90 minutes). We walked through the castle and listened to the stories on the guide.

There actually isn’t very much left of the castle. The royals stopped living in it in the early 18th century, and then in the late 18th century it burned down. What’s left has more of the feel of an archaeological site than the other castles we have visited so far. It was built in the 12th century and went through many phases of construction and purpose. It has 3 baileys, which we learned were walls to protect itself. It is really more of a fortress. It went through many owners, but always was an imposing view over the valleys nearby. It is actually lucky that it burned down in 1780 and no one rebuilt it. Therefore it looks more like it did when in use than many of the other castles we’ve seen during our travels.

The grounds of the castle are massive: there are multiple courtyards within the complex. After doing the audio tour, we spent some time just soaking in the ambiance from different places within the structure. The view was great as well!

We really enjoyed the castle and finally had some good weather! The sun was out and it was warm (actually a bit humid), but we were so excited that it wasn’t cloudy! We highly recommend making time for this castle if you visit Slovakia.

Where We Ate

On our first night in Levoča, we found a small place just off the main town square that seemed to have reasonable prices. We ordered some regional specialities:

  • Bryndzové halušky –  a national dish of Slovakia. Halušky are small potato dumplings, similar in size to macaroni almost. Bryndza is sheep cheese, so the dish is potato dumplings covered with sheep cheese. It usually comes with some sort of meet on top, like bacon or sausage. It tastes somewhat like macaroni and cheese, and is very good and filling.

  • A pototato pancake filled with a meat mixture

For drinks we had a Šariš beer.

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The halušky is in front of Della

On our second night, we decided to eat at a restaurant was built into the old city walls. Probably a little touristy, but seemed like a fun opportunity!

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