Budapest Day 2: The Danube

The Danube is the second longest river in Europe, flowing through or forming part of the border of 10 countries.  It flows right through the middle of Budapest, separating the west bank of Buda and Obuda from the east bank of Pest, three cities that were unified in 1873 to form the city of Budapest.  We saw a bit of the Danube during our self-guided walking tour of Bratislava, but hadn’t really walked along its banks so we set out to do so today, starting at the Budapest Parliament building, which is located on the Pest side of the river bank…

The Budapest Parliament is one of the most impressive looking Parliament buildings we have seen on our trip (comparable to the Houses of Parliament in London) and being right on the banks of the Danube makes it look idyllic.  Unlike Westminster, the Hungarian Parliament can be toured year round at certain times for 2520 HUF (about $15 CAD).  Unfortunately we had just missed the 12 o’clock English tour and neither of us felt like waiting until 2 o’clock for the next one, so we carried on with our walking after having a look at the outside of the Parliament building.

We walked south along the river bank, admiring the view from here of the Buda side, until we got past the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, a famous landmark of Budapest because it was the first permanent bridge across the Danube between Buda and Pest.  Since we hadn’t eaten lunch yet and there seemed to be no restaurants along the river bank, we decided to walk back into town, towards St. Stephen’s Basilica, Budapest’s most well known basilica.  Oddly enough, the entire way there we couldn’t find any restaurants either, just a bunch of coffee shops! 

Frustrated and hungry, we decided to eat at one of the restaurants right beside St. Stephen’s (called Bazilika Café & Restaurant), which turned out to be the worst idea we’ve had since the Golema restaurant in Prague.  I tried the “Gypsy style roast pork,” which wasn’t roast pork at all but two tiny pork chops drenched in a ridiculously salty cumin flavored sauce (it was like someone went to shake salt into the sauce and then the lid accidentally fell off).  The rice it came with was dry and stiff, like microwaved Uncle Ben’s, but I had to eat it to counter the saltiness of the meat!  Paul ordered the “Hungarian style goulash soup baked with bread” and it was a bowl of Chef Boyardee style soup with little bits of beef and barley in it and a lump of cold bread on top (there’s no way they baked it with the bread!).  His main dish, paprika chicken, was ok in flavor, but the chicken was really really dry and overcooked and there was no sauce to help with the dryness! 

Making matters worse, when we got the bill a 15% service charge had been added, and it wasn’t specified anywhere beforehand that a service charge would be added.  Because the food was so bad and we know the standard tipping policy in Hungary is 10%, we questioned our server about this service charge, saying it should be stated in the menu if they are going to charge so much (our service charge was 1000 HUF!).  He simply shrugged and said “that’s what all the restaurants around here charge.”  If we had the proper amount of cash on us we might have just paid the total plus 10% and left, but we had to use our credit card so we had no choice but to pay what they wanted.  Lesson learned: don’t eat right next to a tourist attraction and ask what they charge for service in Hungary cuz it seems they don’t have to specify in the menu if they are going to charge you!