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Budapest Shines - Page 3
By Tom Kagy | 17 Jun, 2025
The majestic Hungarian capital of Budapest deserves the title Grand Duchess of the Danube.
It was mid-afternoon and we were starting to get hungry. The Savoyai Terrace offered a tempting opportunity to sit on the front parapet with a drink and bar food. But the Pest side of the river was our planned lunch stop. We assigned stops for meal and coffee to specific sightseeing areas to avoid the traveler's trap of sitting down for too many food and drink stops.
The front parapet of Buda Castle overlooking the city across the Danube, adorned with the statue of Eugene of Savoy, afforded one of the most monumental moments of our Central Europe trip.
We descended the steep front driveway toward the pedestrian entrance to Széchenyi lánchíd (Széchenyi Chain Bridge), enjoying the exhilarating sense of having Budapest at our feet. We again spotted the long procession of black vehicles descending from the hill. It seemed an extremely long interval to travel a very short distance from the palace courtyard, furthering our suspicion that the procession was for filming, not for official transport.
Walking down from the front parapet of Buda Castle offers a spectacular view of the southern Pest side of Budapest.
Unlike Prague's Charles Bridge which is devoted entirely to pedestrians, the Chain Bridge completed in 1849 as Hungary's first permanent bridge across the Danube, carries a high volume of vehicular traffic. It's also about twice as long and has far fewer pedestrians than the Charles. But it's Budapest's closest analog to the historic Charles Bridge.
The front parapet of Buda Castle provides an enchanting view of the parliament building across the Danube.
Unlike the Old Town side of the Danube in Prague, Budapest's Pest side of the Chain Bridge is quiet and still as befits a government administrative center. But for those, like us, curious about the character of a city and a nation in its various aspects, not merely the tourist attractions, the area has its own appeal. The two-block layer of officialdom that insulates the more colorful commercial streets from the riverfront seemed to exude dignity and purpose as we rested briefly on a bench among the maze of quiet official buildings. After several bad years in the first part of the decade, Hungary's economy had improved significantly in 2024, thanks to major policy changes designed to strengthen the Forint.
The western edge of the castle hill complex affords views of the Buda side of the city below.
The desire to experience the Pest side of the city was limited by our legs. By the time we completed a zigzag mile to Liberty Square (Szabadság tér), downtown's biggest park, we were too hungry and tired to do much more than find a nearby restaurant. That turned out to be a Mexican place called Iguana Bar and Grill which offered an outdoor table and a smiling hostess to seat us.
This view of the harbor on the Pest side of the Danube shows one of the many dinner cruise boats that make up a big share of Budapest's dining scene.
Central European restaurants are extremely slow to take and deliver orders. The cause, we speculated, was understaffing due to a scarcity of immigrant labor, a condition generally not encountered in the States — though Trump's policies might change that. The Iguana was no exception. After a 15-minute wait to order, we endured a 25-minute wait for our food which was nothing more elaborate than a bowl of chili, quesadilla and a salad. It arrived just in time to save us from starvation.
The quiet Pest side of the Budapest adjacent to the river is dominated by government administrative offices.
Our other objective on the Pest side was to view Országház, the Parliament building, up close. After our late lunch we made our way to the busy riverside drive fronting the intricate array of spires and arches that reminded us of the British Parliament building on the Thames. The most striking difference was Országház's brilliant whiteness in contrast to the gray of its British counterpart.
Even more brilliantly white was the wedding gown and train of the bride who, with her groom, was standing on the steps of the Parliament building as her wedding photos were taken by a brave female photographer. The photographer risked her life to trot across the busy road for a different perspective from which to shout posing directions.
We found a bench just across the drive from Országház and enjoyed the view of the river and the magnificent skyline of the Buda side produced by the towers and spires of Fisherman's Bastion and Mattias Church. A steady stream of cruise boats glided past in both directions, reminding us that a dinner cruise might be an option for our last evening in Budapest.
On our first night in Budapest we had gazed out our hotel room window and marveled at the sheer number of dinner cruisers, some of which are big enough to hold sizable restaurants. In fact, some are actual floating restaurants. The Danube's centrality makes it the city's main boulevard of sorts, carrying much of its dining activity, especially in the evening.
We continued north up the riverside drive toward Margit hid (Margaret Bridge) for our walk back to the Buda side and our hotel for a much-needed rest before heading out to dinner. Completed in 1876 as Budapest's second permanent bridge, Margaret Bridge provides a more expansive, wide-open view of both sides of the river than we had enjoyed from the Chain Bridge with its prominent support towers and thick cables. The bridge was angled like a boomerang, with its center point slightly further upriver and a bit more elevated than either end. So we were walking uphill until the halfway point, then downhill.
On the Buda side we passed Angelika Étterem és Kávéház (Angelika Restaurant and Cafe), whose riverview patio area features tables individually encased in clear plexiglass to provide views of Parliament while also a modicum of notional privacy. It was visually novel enough that we considered returning there for dinner. But the reviews we checked were mostly highly negative. Booking a dinner cruise was briefly considered but our deep bias against being confined to close quarters for a specific duration, as well as a desire to enjoy another restaurant with authentic local roots, persuaded us to walk partway back up the hill to a cozy Hungarian restaurant called Hunyadi tucked away on a steep side street below Fisherman's Bastion.
We ordered hummus, goulash and chicken paprikash and remarked to our charming, English-fluent and apparently gay waiter on the delightful playlist that had been putting out a series of our favorite oldies. He gestured toward the fortyish owner-chef as the playlist's brilliant author. He then turned away a young Chinese female tourist inquiring about a table, noting that the kitchen had just closed. It was after nine.
When our food finally arrived — Hunyadi was no exception to the slowness of Central/Eastern European kitchens — it was delicious, one of the best meals of our trip thus far, and one we actually came close to finishing.
The walk down the few downhill blocks back to our hotel was tinged with regret. The next day's long drive to Ljubljana meant that these were our final moments walking the streets of Buda which, due to its hilliness, had reminded us of San Francisco. At our feet flowed the Danube, not the Pacific, but the ambience recalled student days of decades ago when The City meant the one about which Tony Bennett sang so memorably. To be sure, Tony's song had been released a couple decades before our student days, but the concept of leaving one's heart in a city had still resonated with us.
The next morning we had our usual hotel breakfast buffet before packing, gazing fondly out the window at one of our most memorable views ever from a hotel room, then heading down to retrieve our car. It turned out the car couldn't simply be driven up by a valet. The hotel parking facility used an elevator system. We had to go down and drive into the elevator with the valet guiding us ever so cautiously with quick and precise hand signals. Once I managed to get the car positioned inside the elevator, the valet pushed a button and we rose slowly up to street level. Then the elevator rotated 90 degrees to let us drive out to the riverside drive.
A series of turns took us again past the back street between the river and castle hill before entering a tunnel below the hill and onto scenic streets leading to the M1 highway, then to E71 for the five-hour southwestward drive to Ljubljana for the only three-night stay of our trip. We were looking forward to what we hoped would be a few days at a leisurely pace.
The Danube's centrality makes it the city's main boulevard of sorts, carrying much of its dining activity, especially in the evening.
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