Kelly and I enjoyed our week in Munich in 2005. We liked traveling together and found out we are both history nerds. It helps we both like to try to new things, eat different foods, too. We decided to return to Europe using Go-Today again. Their website currently offers a Budapest-Vienna-Prague tour, but when we booked it was Budapest-Prague and we added 2 nights in Vienna.

I love Europe in the fall. September and October have perfect weather. Families with kids and college students are back in school, so the crowds are gone, the Europeans are on holiday all of August so are back at work. We booked mid-September again.

Budapest

We arrived in Budapest around 0830, September 12th. After collecting our bags and getting through passport control, we took a taxi to hotel. We got there around 1030-1100, and, of course, it was too early to check-in. We didn’t want to wait around, so we asked about bag storage and went back out.

We walked to the train station and bought metro passes then went downtown. We stopped at Absolute Tours and registered for the 1330 walking tour and then walked around for a while on our own.

We had a great lunch at an outdoor café, pork stew or goulash, and a Gerbund beer then went to our meeting point for the tour. We went ALL over town for 3 hours and ended at St. Matyas church on the hill. Kelly and I paid to go up on the Fisherman’s Bastion. Built in the 19th c. as a lookout tower for the city, it is beautiful and has great views overlooking the city.

We walked down the hill towards the bus stop, but stopped for a beer at a café then decided to go back up and see the interior of St. Matyas. It was closed when we were there but opened at 1900. After visiting the church, we caught the number 16 bus to Deak Ter then the metro to the hotel. We were thankful for good maps from the visitor center allowing us to use public transportation so easily. Deak Ter is the central square, where a lot of tour groups meet, with stations for 3 metro lines and 2 of the tram lines.

We were back at the hotel by about 2030-2100 and finally checked in. We had a very nice room. After a long day of travel and walking we were ready for bed.

We slept for about 10 hours. We got up at 0845 and felt great. We had a good breakfast then took the subway to Deak Ter for the Hammer & Sickle Tour. “The way it was comrade! On this tour we’ll take you on a journey back through time to show you how life was like during our 50 years of Communism, how Big Brother told us what to do and what not to do.”

We took a bus to Statue Park or Memento Park. The Hungarians were brilliant, when other countries were pulling down Communist buildings and statues in the 90s, they moved them to a park and started charging tourists to see them. The park is wonderful to walk through and see all these statues together. So much more interesting than randomly placed throughout the city. I don’t use computer mice any more but still have the mouse pad I bought, “East Park” with South Park-like images of Marx, Engles, Lenin and Che Guevara.

After returning to town, we went to the tour company office to see the “Budapest Retro Interactive Museum” and learn about everyday life behind the Iron Curtain. We saw all sorts of Communism era relics, furniture, identification papers, and books. They had an East German Trablant car, it was interesting to finally see one of these cars.

We finished about 1430. Kelly and I walked down the street to see the beautiful St. Stephen’s. But after stopping at a café for a late lunch, pizza and some great Dreher beer (I bought the glass for my collection) we decided to go directly to the 1600 Opera House guided tour. It’s a gorgeous building and I really enjoyed the tour.

After finishing at 1700 we went back to see St Stephan’s. It’s beautiful. We did a quick tour but some areas were off limits due to a service in progress.

We went back to the hotel to get our suits to visit the Szechenyi Baths. The baths are in an amazing building, with 15 indoor and 3 outdoor baths. They are the largest thermal baths in Europe.

We stayed from 1915 until about 2130. We ran into the same nice British couple we had met on both the tours we took. We took the metro to the Oktogen stop and had dinner. We stayed too late and the metro closed at 2300; we had to take a taxi back to the hotel.

Thursday, the 15th, we stopped at the train office to check our reservation for the train to Vienna, then took the Metro to go downtown to visit the House of Terror. We spent two hours at the museum. It was the former headquarters of the Crossed Arrow party (Nazi’s) and, after the war, the Secret Police (under Communism). We both rented the head phones but they had hand-outs in each room, too, that said the same things. It is a very interesting museum. The entrance room, open to 3 stories, has over 3000 black and white photos of people killed under the Nazi’s and Communists. The basement has the prison cells used for interrogation and torture of political prisoners.

We took the metro to Parliament, had lunch then took the 1400 Parliament tour. Another amazing building, started in 1885, it is a UNESCO site. The interior is incredible, from the entrance with the Grand Staircase to the multi-story legislative chambers.

We took the metro across the river for pictures of the building (that unfortunately had some scaffolding) then took a tram down the street to go to Gellert Hotel to see the famous baths there. They were very expensive so we decided not to use the baths but I was glad to see the beautiful rooms, regardless.

Close by is the Cave Church, so we walked up the hill for a quick visit. Supposedly, originally the home of a hermit monk, it was walled up during Communist rule. The wall was pulled down after the 1989 revolution.

We walked across Liberty Bridge to the huge Central Market. We had some really good and cheap food at the shops upstairs. Kelly had some great goulash and I had some cabbage rolls. We browsed for a while then stopped for a beer at a café up the street.

This is where we met 10 British guys who were in Budapest for a long weekend. They heard us speaking English and we started talking about travel. We spent a few hours trying several different bars and having a few beers with them.

On Friday, we slept late since we hadn’t got back until around 2-3. We went to the beautiful Margaret Island and walked the trails, saw the fountain, visited the Turkish Baths then strolled down Vaci Uta.

We went back to the market and I picked up some items I had been looking at the day before for gifts. We visited the Szechenyi Baths again. We left around 2100 and went back to hotel area. We found a café up the street and had a couple Belgian beers. They closed so we moved on to another place and had a Gosser, an Austrian beer, before going back to the hotel. We packed so we could get an early start the next day.

Vienna

On Saturday, 9/16, we caught the 0900 train to Vienna and arrived around noon. We walked down to the inner circle after taking a taxi from the train station to our hotel. We had a very nice hotel, but it was quite a distance from any metro stop so we had a long walk to get around the city.

We looked and looked and FINALLY found an ATM to get some Euros. We wandered through town and stopped at Judenplatz for lunch, Kelly had a Greek salad and I had a great schnitzel.

We visited St Stephan’s and took a tour of the Catacombs. After our tour, we found the café we had read about with the wonderful baked goods, Demel’s, and we split pieces of sacher torte and truffle cake. They’ve been selling pastries since 1786, even to Emperor Franz Josef. The cakes were delicious.

We bought tickets to a Mozart concert from this cute guy in an 1800’s period costume, so we went back to the hotel to change for the concert. It was raining and we had a bit of a walk to get to the Imperial Hall, but the concert was wonderful.

Sunday, after getting back downtown, to the inner circle area, we went to the Hofburg Palace to pick up the Spanish Riding School tickets that Kelly had ordered online. This was one of the reasons we added time in Vienna. It was hard to find the room, there were plenty of signs with arrows, but they kind of went in a circle. We finally got the tickets then went back to the line to get in to the Winter Riding School. The show was great, very interesting, and in a wonderful location. There was a single row of seats on the second floor for excellent viewing. No photos were allowed during the presentation but I did get a nice photo of the beautiful arena.

The show was finished at 1230. We went back to the same restaurant as yesterday after visiting the Imperial Rooms at the Palace. I went to the Kapuziner Church to visit the Imperial Crypts. This has been the Habsburg burial vault since 1618, 12 emperors and 22 empresses are entombed here. The huge silver coffins are amazing.

Kelly went to the Lipizzaner Museum while I was visiting the crypts. We met up to go to Karlskirche together. There was a display of huge bears sponsored by the UN, part of the World Tour of Buddy Bear, in Karlsplatz, in front of the church. There was a bear representing each country decorated by an artist from that country. We toured the church then enjoyed all the bears.

We went back to Demel to get more cakes. We made it just in time, they were closing soon so we bought some cakes to “take away”. I went back to the hotel as I was very, very tired from a cold and the cold medicine I took, Kelly went to the famous Ferris wheel.

Prague

We left for Prague, Monday the 18th around 9. We got up very early, had a quick breakfast then took a cab to the train station. We changed trains at Breclav. We had a long wait for the train to Prague, it was 40-45 minutes late. We arrived in Prague, or Praha, at 1415.

We bought a 3-day pass and took the metro from the train station to our hotel. Our hotel was quite a distance from all the sites, but very comfortable and we had a nice room. We had a local beer, Pilsner Urquell, at the hotel while relaxing in the lobby and trying to figure out what to do first.

We took the metro to Old Town Square. This has been the city’s marketplace since the 12th c, it’s a huge beautiful open space with the Town Hall, the amazing Astronomical clock, some gorgeous buildings, including Kafka’s old home.

We saw the Powder Gate, started in 1475. It has undergone several restorations because of damage through wars and political uprisings. It has had a number of different uses, it was used to store gun powder in the 17th c. It was also part of the coronation ceremonies for Czech monarchs, the procession would enter town through this gate to the Prague Castle. The tower contains various displays of coat of arms from the kings, plus religious artifacts.

We had a great dinner at one of the many restaurants on the square. We found a place with both the beer and the food we wanted to try. We had Velkopopovicky Kozel, the beer said to be “the world’s finest” in our guide book, and “Svíčková na smetaně”, printed in my guide book as “Smichova na Smetana”, roast with carrot sweetened gravy, cranberries, cream, and some great dumplings. We sat outside and enjoyed dinner, the truly excellent beer, and the view of the square.

After dinner we wandered around the square for a while then found an intranet café and checked our email. We went back to the square and took the 2030 ghost tour, kind of hokey but interesting, had another beer at a café and then watched the movement of the clock tower at 2200. The clock procession strikes every hour.

We took the “Insider Tour” at 0945 on Tuesday. It lasted until mid-afternoon, and we saw a lot with our great guide, Margaret. We visited Old Town and the Jewish Quarter.

We stopped at a great café and Kelly and I got to try the original Budvar beer. The town, Budvar, is called Budweiser by the Germans. It is much better than American-style Budweiser. I have occasionally found Budvar in the US, there was some at a store in Dallas when I visited.

Later, we took a tram to Castle Hill. We stayed there when the tour ended and visited the Golden Lane and St. Vitus’ church. We walked down the Terrace Gardens and across the fantastic Charles Bridge.

We stopped at the Museum of Torture Instruments. Gruesome but interesting. We finished around 1730. We wandered around town browsing for a while then went back to the same restaurant on Old Town Square. We realized after ordering, we missed the chance to catch the Pub Crawl Tour, since it didn’t run on Wednesday’s. We should have taken it tonight but it was too late.

We did some shopping, I bought the decorative wall tile I’d been looking at, then went to the Terrace Hotel; they have a café on the roof and had another type of Czech beer, Staropreman. My guide book had a section on the “Top 10 Czech Beers” to try in Prague. We tried but couldn’t find them all.

On Wednesday, we got up fairly early to see St. Charles Bridge without the crowds. We went back to Old Town Square to catch a 1000 boat tour, we had beautiful views of the city from the Vltava River. We finished around noon then returned to the Jewish Quarter, which we had only walked through on the Insider Tour.

Kelly and I went to the Old Jewish Cemetery but the people at the ticket booth hung up their ‘out to lunch’ sign and just walked away with several of us still in the line. Hmm. The couple in front of us turned around and said, well, that’s interesting.

We went browsing at some craft booths and we both bought some jewelry then had lunch. We decided to skip the cemetery, it was a fairly expensive ticket bundled with a lot of other things we weren’t interested in seeing.

We walked back through town, over the Charles Bridge. There was a photography exhibit, great pictures from around the world, sponsored by the UN, running along the river by the Old Town Bridge Tower. On the way there I found a place to buy a Kozel beer glass. We did some shopping on Old Town square and visited the Museum of Communism.

We had dinner and two Kozels on the square. Kozel is very, very filling and I couldn’t finish the second one.

We flew back to the States on Thursday the 21st. We spent our remaining Czech crowns at the airport. Kelly bought some Gambrinus beer and had one while we waited for our flight to Paris. She was going to take the other two home to share with Manny but had to surrender them in Paris when we changed planes. I bought chocolate and they let me keep that.

Our plane from Prague to Paris arrived late so they had vans meeting us in Paris to take us to the various connecting flights. Charles de Gaulle airport is HUGE. We were searched three times by the damn French airline personnel, I think they had it out for Americans. Can’t say I really blame them after the crap they get from our government, however. “Freedom fries”? Seriously?

We arrived back into Chicago around before 1600, then drove home. My suitcase was missing and I didn’t get it for a week so I had no unpacking or laundry. I took a shower and went to bed. We both went to work the next day. We were very jetlagged as we caught up on emails at work. Fortunately, it was Friday so we had the weekend to catch up on our sleep. On Monday, we started discussing where to go in 2007?

** All photos property of Lisa, except where other source listed **