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Lunch in Slovakia, Dinner in Krakow September 18, 2011

Filed under: Contiki,Europe,Poland,Slovakia,Travel — Kelocity @ 1:27 pm
Tags: Banska Bystricia, Contiki, Europe, Food, Krakow, Poland. Slovakia, Travel

We left Budapest after breakfast and headed towards Krakow Poland. On the way, we drove through Slovakia. The Czech Republic and Slovakia used to be Czechoslovakia until it split peacefully in 1993.
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Halfway through the drive, we stopped in a town called Banska Bystricia for lunch.

Slovakia is a little off the radar for the hoards of tourists, so it was nice to enjoy a sleepy European town and have it all to ourselves. I really enjoyed this stop in an off-the-beaten-path location. (Rick Steves would be proud).

The town was so picturesque, colorful and vibrant. And the only other people we saw were locals strolling with their kids on a quiet Saturday morning.

The old square is zoned for pedestrians and is lined with cute buildings, local businesses and a few restaurants.

We surveyed our menu options and ended up at a place advertising their crepes. Sold. It sounded perfect!

Since all we were doing was sitting on a bus all day, we kept it pretty light. I started with a greek salad that came with creamy cheese and some toast. Hit the spot!

Irving ordered a ham and cheese savory crepe that looked awesome!

But don’t worry, I got my share of crepes too when I ordered a Nutella and banana dessert one!

Feel free to drool…. I’ll wait…..

The prices there weren’t hiked up for tourists and it was so reasonable, Irving ordered a Nutella and Banana waffle too!

I’m not sure where all of our other Contiki mates dined, but I’m pretty sure they missed out, this was amazing.

Wish we could have explored Slovakia more. I bet the whole country is peppered with little towns like this with unexplored sights.

And check out their tourist information center… lined with chandeliers. So pretty.

I’ll be back, Slovakia!

From there, our drive continued towards Poland. It was a long drive, but the view out the bus window was worth it. So pretty!

By dinnertime, we had arrived into Krakow!

Tonight, there was an included regional dinner in the Jewish Quarter of Krakow, Kazimierz. I think I remember a statistic that said more than 80% of Krakow’s jews had been killed in WWII. It may even actually be higher than that. Before the war, this Jewish Quarter was vibrant and full of life, now it’s a little ghostly and sad, but more on that during our guided tour tomorrow.

Dinner was at Ariel, a traditional Jewish restaurant that was happy to accommodate our group.

We started with Onion Soup, served with Cheese and Croutons.

Irving had the meal that was served (though we can’t remember now if it was chicken or duck).

And I got the latkes… I thought it meant potato pancakes, but instead was more of a potato loaf). It had a mushroom gravy over the top and was extremely salty. I’m all for eating authentic when I travel, but I was overwhelmed by the amount of salt many of the countries used in their dishes.

Dessert was a rum raisin custard.

Dinner was accompanied by a three piece musical group (accordion, clarinet and bass), the music was beautiful and really set the stage for our visit to Poland.

After dinner, a group of us headed out for some night life. We hit two bars along the way. The drink of choice was a traditional cocktail that mixed apple juice, vodka, cucumber schnapps and cinnamon. Even I caved and had my first drink of the trip, it was worth it. Yum!

Later, map in hand, I led our little group through the streets of Krakow until we found the old town square. It was stunning at night.

I love when our first impressions of a city are at night. The crowds are gone, the vendors shut down, and you can bask in the white lights of a town proud of its history.

Can’t wait to get up and explore more tomorrow!

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17-Mile Walk around Budapest

Filed under: Budapest,Contiki,Europe,Hungary,Travel — Kelocity @ 6:03 am
Tags: Budapest, Contiki, Europe, Hungary, Soccer, Travel

We woke up to a lovely morning in Budapest. After breakfast, we got started right away with a tour of the Parliament Building. One of the benefits of touring with a group is being able to avoid long lines at popular attractions like this one.

The inside is decorated beautifully with lots of gold leaf and granite.

This is the inside of the huge dome that crowns the building.

We learned about how the Parliament functions and saw one of the rooms where the government votes on occasion.

Then we walked into the center of town. Just recently they dedicated a monument to Ronald Reagan for the work he did to help communism in the 80s. It made me proud to see an American being celebrated there.

We ended our tour at St. Stephan’s Basilica (or as my tourist map called it: bazilica).

The church itself is really beautiful. I remembered it from when I was there 8 years ago. It’s bright and colorful.

But the highlight is seeing their beloved relic: the forearm of St. Stephan himself. If you put some money in a box, it lights up so you can see it. Kind of creepy and weird, I agree.

We walked down towards the river after to see one of the more somber memorials in Budapest. During World War II, Jews were especially targeted in Hungary. One one very sad day, the Nazis lined up a huge group of them on the river bank and shot them all into the water.

There now stands a long row of copper shoes to represent each of the victims. There were shoes for each of the men, women and children who lost their lives here.

After that, we took our time reflecting on the horrors that occurred here just decades before.

After a bit of walking, we were ready for lunch.

I felt like I hadn’t had vegetables in a while and opted for a nice simple salad. It was so good! Guess my body needed that!

From there, we walked to find the 2nd largest synagogue in the world (the 1st largest is in New York City).

Around the back is an impressive monument to commemorate each of the Jews from Budapest who lost their lives during World War II. This tree looks like a weeping willow and also an upside down menorah. Each ‘leaf’ of the tree has a person’s name engraved on it.

Next we walked over to the Museum of Terror.

It was used during WWII by the Nazis, then by the Hungarian Red Cross militia and finally by the communists to torture and kill people who were thought to be enemies of the regimes.

Hundreds of innocent people lost their lives in the basement of this building.

The upper floors house exhibits about Hungary’s history from WWII through the Cold War. The plaques were in Hungarian, but they had English pamphlets in each room. They also had an audio tour that I’m sure would have been really great. We wished we had done that.

The basement of the building is where they housed the prisoners in gross, inhumane cells meant to torture. Nearly all of them were eventually executed and only a handful of agents responsible were ever brought to justice. This is a definite must see if you’re visiting Budapest.

Contiki gave us all an unlimited metro ticket that gave us free transportation all over the city, so we took the subway from there and went up to a park about a mile up.

I laughed so hard when I saw the ticket validation box in the station. When I was in Budapest in 2003, I arrived at night with a college friend and bought a bunch of subway tickets to use throughout our weekend. I innocently forgot to validate my ticket in one of these boxes and subsequently got fined a lot of money when I got caught by a police man. So I’ve officially come back to Budapest to conquer that orange box and let the city redeem itself to me. Fortunately it did, it was one of the best parts of our trip.

We walked all over the park and were impressed by how big and how clean it was.

After that, we found out that was a Hungary/Sweden soccer game at the stadium that night so we walked over there to try and get tickets. We walked around that whole dang park for TWO hours looking for the ticket windows before finally surrendering empty handed. By then we had walked about 14 miles and headed back to the hotel to grab a nap before dinner. My feet were KILLING me!

Dinner was on our own and we just decided to walk til we found something good. We found a hopping street close by with tons of options.

We watched most of the soccer game and continued on to explore the city again at night. We walked over the Chain Bridge to view the Elizabeth Bridge (named after the famous Princess Elizabeth from Vienna… Austria ruled Hungary back then so she came to Budapest quite often).

Once on the other side, we walked in the direction of the Parliament to get one last view of the glowing building.

We laughed when we saw this Trafalgar Bus parked in front. Once we get too old for Contiki, that will be our tour someday! (Contiki is just for 18-35 year olds).

In all, we covered 17 miles on foot that day. Guess it’s good training for the half marathon I have coming up in October!

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Moving East: Introduction to Budapest September 17, 2011

Filed under: Contiki,Europe,Hungary,Travel — Kelocity @ 4:10 pm
Tags: Budapest, Contiki, Europe, Hungary, Travel

Europe is in such an interesting place right now with most of the countries entering the European Union. One of the biggest changes is that all the borders within the Union are now completely open. You can drive between countries without being stopped. Now the border patrol stations are now abandoned.

We made it into Budapest and arrived into a pretty nice hotel right on the Danube river.

In the afternoon we did a driving tour around Gellert Hill to see the city from above.

From up there, we could see everything. Buda is on the left of the river and Pest is on the right. The Danube river separates the two. The two sides eventually merged to form Budapest.

Shortly after, we drove to the Fisherman’s Bastian. I remember this vividly from my visit to Budapest in 2003. It was a place I knew Irving would love too.

It’s so exciting to come back with him now and share it with him.

I couldn’t choose between pictures to show you. It was all so gorgeous I had to share a few more. Doesn’t it look like a giant sand castle?

And my favorite:

For dinner, we chose to do the Danube River Cruise optional excursion. It was a great way to see the city and the food was pretty impressive.

They had quite the spread of traditional Hungarian food including Paprika soup, stuffed cabbage and paprika chicken. (The Paprika soup was to DIE for!)

I ate largely vegetarian on this trip and ate this tomato and feta salad in an avocado. However afterwards I realized that it may have been tofu? I’m not sure but it was good either way!

Budapest is illuminated with lights at night and the best way to see it is from the river.

And the crown jewel of it all (literally) is the Parliament Building. Just stunning at night.

What a great introduction to what will become one of our favorite cities in Europe.

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Eating your Way through Vienna September 15, 2011

Filed under: Austria,Contiki,Europe,Travel — Kelocity @ 4:38 pm
Tags: Austria, Contiki, Europe, Travel, Vienna

In the morning, we had a few more hours to explore Vienna before jumping back on the bus. I should mention that our entire trip had AMAZING weather, blue skies and in the 70s every single day. We really lucked out.

We stopped at the famous statue of Mozart, which is near the royal palace. In front of it is the clef symbol made out of red roses.

They really love their Mozart here.

We had a bit of time to kill before some of the museums opened, so we stopped to have a piece of famous Sacher Torte.

Instead of getting a big slice, we got two smaller pieces to enjoy.

It’s a bitter chocolate cake with apricots baked in and then covered with a thick fudge frosting. It was every bit as magical as you can imagine. I might have to get this again when we go to Salzburg next week!

We walked back through the grounds of the palace again for a few more pictures.

Also housed inside is the Vienna Boys Choir and the Spanish Riding School.

I visited Vienna back in 2003 and though I loved the city, there wasn’t a whole lot to see and do. Today, we only had time to do one or two things so we decided to visit this church which holds all of the Hapsburg’s royal family tombs in its crypt.

Many of them dated back hundreds of years, but the most recent one was a descendent who was buried there this year.

The most popular is Princess Elizabeth, most commonly known as Sisi. She was the ‘people’s princess’ of their time and the citizens of the Empire adored her.

Then we had just enough time to enjoy a walk through the palace gardens.

Finally we were hungry enough to have some more SCHNITZEL! There is a chain of places that are known for it called Wienerwald!!

They definitely delivered. Not as good as at the concert last night, but still pretty great. I got the chicken…

And Irving got the Veal (with potato balls instead of fries).

Then we said goodbye to Vienna before heading into Hungary.

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Vienna: Schnitzel and Strudel

Filed under: Austria,Contiki,Europe,Travel — Kelocity @ 1:35 pm
Tags: Austria, Contiki, Europe, Travel, Vienna

We started our day with breakfast in Prague before hitting the road. The watermelon was to DIE for. It tasted SO much better than watermelon in the States. And it actually had seeds! I think it’s sad that we’ve reached a point where we will say “When I was your age, watermelon had seeds! I almost forgot that they’re supposed to even had seeds. It was so ripe and juicy, my mouth is watering now just thinking about it.

We didn’t get a chance to stop for a real lunch but we made due with a gas station rest stop. We pieced together a “meal” that included these! I love how it says “Original Gold Fischli”… I’m pretty sure those are not original. LOL But they were yum!

A bit later we arrived into Vienna.

Vienna was a bit of a departure from all the Cold War and WWII history we had been immersed in. And instead, we learned about the Hapsburg family and their century long reign over the Austrian-Hungarian empire.

We walked through around the grounds of their previous royal palaces.

The Hapsburg family ruled here until the first World War at which point the dynasty was dissolved.

To give you an idea of how much wealth and power they had, this was their carriage house! Complete with a giant dome overhead.

The royal cathedral that the family used for private worship.

Switching gears a bit, we visited a really powerful holocaust memorial in the center of Vienna. This one is a sculpted man with his head in the sand. It represents how Europe turned a blind eye to what was really going on during the darkest years of their history.

After we passed the largest Swarovski shop in the world. It was three stories of their famous crystal jewelry and decorative pieces. (We visited the next day with Contiki.