All Saints Vacation - Prague and Budapest

Friday October 26th

Being that most of Europe is a very Catholic continent, they celebrate All Saints Day much more than Americans do. In the US it’s basically just a catholic holiday where we go to mass and well that’s about it. However, here in France it is a different story. In France, much like most of Europe, we get a week long vacation in honor of All Saints Day. In addition there is no politically correct bull**** that forces us to rename the vacation to some non-religious term. (Most schools do not call it Christmas break but rather Winter break, and Spring Vacation instead of Easter Break). So because of this wonderful week of vacation I decided to do a little bit of travelling. Along with 3 of my friends, Juli, Tessa and Carolyn, we parted Clermont for Paris on Friday October 26th. We all have our “cartes douze vingt-cinq” (literally 12 to 25 card) which gives us up to 50% off of train travel in France. Because of this little card, a 1st class ticket to Paris ended up being the same price as 2nd class, therefore us being the intelligent college students that we are we obviously chose to travel first class to Paris. We boarded the extremely long train (there were almost 20 cars in the train) and headed to Paris. First class trains in France are extremely nice, super big leather chairs with automatic reclining and because we reserved 4 seats we had a table in between us so it was 2 people facing the other two. It made the trip a lot faster to Paris because we played euchre and then napped as we pulled into the station. Upon our arrival into Paris we had to take a taxi to our hotel for the night since our flight to Prague didn’t leave until very early Saturday morning. Our taxi driver was very cool and being the male of the group I sat up front with him on our way to the hotel, we had a decent conversation and I am convinced that he gave us a lower fare because of our friendly conversation! Either way, after driving around and getting a little lost on the way to the hotel we arrived at our destination, or so we thought. We had reserved our room online for a Holiday Inn in the “hotel district” of Paris. Our taxi driver took us to the Holiday Inn in the “Hotel District” of Paris, however when we walked into the door we immediately realized that we couldn’t of been in the right hotel. It was a super nice 3 or 4 star hotel that was way more expensive than the price we had paid online. Nonetheless we went to the front desk and told them we had a reservation at the hotel. The hostess informed us that yes in deed we were at the wrong hotel and our hotel was down the street about 50 meters. So we left the wonderful hotel wondering what kind of hotel we were actually going to be staying in. The hotel ended up being really nice and even had shuttles to take us to the airport in the morning which was definitely a convenience we hadn’t really expected. Just one more note about the hotel; Tessa was the one who reserved the hotel and upon entering the room the TV was on and it said, “Dear Sir, Madam Tessa Haviland.” It was amusing at the time that it said Sir, Madame because Tessa is definitely only a woman.

Saturday October 27th

We woke up at 4 am on Saturday morning got ready and checked out then loaded up on the shuttle that was going to take us to the airport. We got to the airport about 2 hours before our flight was leaving, what I thought was more than enough time to get checked in and board our plane. Well I guess when you fly Smart Wings airlines it takes longer because they only had two lines open for check in and there was about 45 people in each line. We got in line thinking it would go pretty fast but no, the lines were moving extremely slow. As we were waiting there I noticed another attendant preparing a third line for Smart Wings. I left our spot in line and headed over there, but the girls did not have faith in what I was doing and chose not to follow. As I was standing there waiting to see if in fact she was opening or if she was doing administrative work (upon asking her if she was opening she just told me to wait a minute) I was giving hand signals to Juli, Tessa and Carolyn. They were asking me if it was opening and I was saying I don’t know and then signaling to wait a minute. As soon as I put up the international “wait a minute” sign, everyone in the other lines stopped creeping forward, then at the moment when I realized she was in fact opening I gave the international “come on, it’s open” sign and then everyone decided to get in line behind me. Tessa, Juli and Carolyn were left in their spots in line, I checked in and then proceeded to get some breakfast. I waited another 20 minutes or so for them to check in and then we headed over to customs. At this point we had about 45 minutes until our plane was scheduled to take off. We get to customs and the line is long enough to extend out past the set of weaves that they had set up. At this point I thought for sure we were going to miss our flight and be stuck in Paris another night, but eventually when they realized that 60% of the people waiting in the customs line were waiting to get on the flight to Prague they brought some more customs officers in and started doing rapid passport checks, only controlling random people. We got through with no problem and boarded the plane with about 15 minutes to spare.

The flight was fairly short and we arrived into Prague around 10:30. We went to the bus line information after exchanging some Euros and getting Czech Kroners. The exchange rate was about 20 Kroners to the dollar. We bought bus passes for the 4 days we would be there and then headed to wait for our bus to take us to the hotel. We ended up being on complete opposite sides of Prague from our hotel and had to take Bus 100 to Metro line A to Metro line C to bus 151. It was about a 40 minute transport to our hotel and upon arriving we walked into Top Hotel Praha. I had reserved this room online and reserved it with Top Hotel Praha. Upon entering the hotel I immediately realized that we were in the wrong hotel again so I asked the security guard if this was in fact the right place, he assured me that I was in the right place so I went to the desk and went to check in. The guy at the desk looked at my online registration and tried to find me in the computer… no such luck. Then he looked at the reservation again and told me that yes I had reserved the hotel through Top Hotel Praha but actually our room was in Top Hotel Garni which is connected to Top Hotel Praha. We walked through the parking lot and checked into our room. The rooms were basically just one big room with 4 beds although it did have a shower and a bathroom. In addition the beds were terrible, 3 individual mattresses ( I would call them more like couch cushions from the 60’s) and a sheet on top with a blanket and a crappy pillow. The only bonus to the hotel was that we got to eat breakfast at the 4 star resort which was Top Hotel Praha. Since we had gotten up so early we decided to take a nap before heading downtown to start our trip in Prague.
We took the metro downtown to see Prague and ended up coming up right in front of the National Museum which is an absolutely gorgeous building. In addition we were at the top of Wenceslas Square and had a great view down the square. We walked down the hill and walked around a little bit and ended up seeing the famous old clock tower, the powder tower and old square before we settled down at this little restaurant to get a bite to eat. They had an English menu and I ordered the Old Czech Plate which is basically 4 types of meat (Pork, Duck, Veal and Chicken) along with red and white cabbage in addition to bread and potato dumplings. Dumplings are made much different in Prague than what I was used to in the United States. It was more like a loaf of dumpling that they sliced into pieces and then served. Along with the meal we had beer which is basically the cheapest drink that you can have. Pilsner beer is brewed about 55 miles outside of Prague and a half liter glass was about $1.25. A coke cost about $3. After dinner we all got dessert and I ordered the home made apple strudel. It was probably the best tasting apple strudel that I have ever had in my life (sorry mom). After dinner we decided to head back and get a good nights rest before a long day of sight seeing.

Sunday October 28th

Before talking about our day on Sunday I figured I’d mention a little bit about Prague in general. The weather was pretty cold, colder than it is in France at the time, along with very gloomy and foggy throughout most of the day. With daylight savings it was completely dark by about 5pm. Ok that’s all I wanted to mention.
After eating breakfast at the hotel we headed off for downtown Prague and a day of sight seeing. Using our Top 10 book (which practically everyone had in almost every language imaginable) we decided that we would visit the Jewish Quarter of Prague. It was a pretty cool area and I’ve never learned so much about Judaism in my life. In all we saw 4 synagogues, a ceremonial hall, and a very old Jewish Cemetery. The synagogues were all very cool but the one that stood out in my eyes was the Spanish Synagogue, unfortunately in most of these areas we weren’t allowed to take pictures thus the lack of photos from this first day of sight seeing. The ones from the cemetery that I took weren’t even supposed to be taken but I snuck a few in. While heading over to the Spanish synagogue we came across the festivities for the Prague Independence Day. It was quite the sight I must say, the army’s band was there playing and marching to some music and we stuck around to watch that for a while but then as the band was leaving and so was I, the rifle squad came in and did a show. I took some videos of the rifle squad although it was from the side and not the front which would have been the ultimate viewing angle. They fired off a few blanks and also had a soldier doing the river dance all to very cliché American music. It was a pretty cool thing and afterwards we had lunch at a stand in the square which was a bratwurst with sauerkraut (yes mom, I do like sauerkraut now!) for about $1.50.
After eating our lunch we toured the Spanish synagogue which ended our tour of the Jewish Quarter. We decided to walk around a bit more exploring and ended up walking throughout most of the Old Village. Prague is a very cool city with tons of beautiful architecture. After touring around a bit more we settled down for dinner and I ordered the Mix Grill – Pork, Chicken and Duck along with French fries. For dessert I had the pancakes with fruit (which was more like a crepe instead of pancakes, but it is a very traditionally Czech plate) and they were very good. At this point it was getting late and very dark (due to daylight savings time which happens a week earlier in Europe) we headed back to the hotel to get up earlier on Monday so that we could use more daylight.

Monday October 29th

Monday we decided to get up earlier and leave the hotel by 9:15 so that we could use some more daylight than we did on Sunday. After looking at our guidebook again, we decided that the chateau and cathedral area would be the region for the day. We took the metro across the river up to the area where the chateau and cathedral were. From the metro station we weren’t really sure which way to go and then after reading the street signs and trying to decipher the Czech language we decided on a path to take. While walking down this street we came across various embassies for many different foreign countries but unfortunately we did not come across the US Embassy. In hind sight we probably should have at least had the number to the embassy just in case anything had happened, thankfully nothing did and we did not need the services or safety of the embassy. Anyways, after walking a bit further down the street we came across a little path that led off of the street, being the curious students we are we took the path and it lead us to the entrance of the royal gardens. The royal gardens are no ordinary garden. They are situated on a very steep hill and there’s 6 different gardens all connected by steps, lots and lots of steps. We decided to pay for the entrance to the garden only because it told us that we could exit to the castle after walking through the gardens. Being that it was the end of October the gardens weren’t much to be spoken for other than well manicured grass and some prune trees. We did get a pretty good view of Prague from the gardens so that was pretty cool. After making our way through the maze of gardens and exiting we found the entrance to the castle, although it was guarded by two soldiers and we didn’t believe it to be the touristy entrance to the castle so we decided to walk around the walls of this huge castle to the other side where we did get inside but couldn’t really figure out where the “castle” was. After we left we realized that the castle was no ordinary castle and it was actually mostly made up of fairly modern looking buildings instead of big stone walls with arrow holes (at least that’s what I think of when I think of the word “castle”). Either way we entered the castle and headed to the cathedral. The Cathedral was absolutely amazing and I think is the most beautiful cathedral that I have seen to this day. It is impossible to describe the cathedral in words but its just HUGE and extremely gothic in formation although parts of it were finished in a baroque style because it was destroyed and at the time it was rebuilt they were building baroque style churches. The inside is absolutely amazing and there is a tomb of Saint-Jean of (I forget the city).

After touring the cathedral for a while we decided to walk around the inside of the castle a little bit more. We wanted to go see this torture wall that was supposed to be a memorial of the people who were beaten by the police in Prague but we couldn’t find it so we turned around and headed back by the cathedral. At this point we were all very hungry so we grabbed a bite to eat by the cathedral at this hot dog stand… it was not very good at all nor the least bit filling. After our quick snack we descended a stair case that had hundreds of stairs and went along the castle walls. After the stairs we were on our way to the Pont Charles which is a very old and very cool bridge that spans the river in Prague when we came across the oldest pub in Prague. It opened in 1423 as a pub and still operates as one to this day. We just had to stop and have a pilsner or two at the pub along with some real lunch which was grilled bratwurst and fries. Speaking of food in the Czech Republic, our guidebook had one good point when talking about the food here. It stated: When talking about food in the Czech Republic it is best not to think about cholesterol. And I don’t think anything that the book said could be any truer than that fact right there.
On our way to Pont Charles, I noticed on the map in our guidebook that there was another church on our way that seemed to be pretty cool, the Eglise Saint Nicolas. The church was baroque in style and was absolutely stunning on the inside. It was much smaller than the cathedral but every bit as beautiful on the inside. (Saint Nicolas is the white church with lots of gold and statues). We left the church and headed to Pont Charles. It was a very cool bridge with some awesome statues along the way. Of course there was also plenty of street vendors and musicians trying to earn some money from all the tourists that take a stroll across the bridge every day. Walking across the bridge allowed me to take some awesome panoramic photos of the river and Prague. I will upload my panoramic photos here in a few days. After Pont Charles, Carolyn was dying to go to the Museum of Communism, so we did. It turned out to be pretty cool, they had some very cool things from communism and you learned a lot about the life under communism. The museum did have a funny side to it as the whole time it was kind of trying to poke fun at communism and make fun of the faults of communism. All in all it was a pretty cool museum. After the museum we headed to the Old Square for dinner. I got the goulash soup along with goulash. Czech goulash is pretty good I must say, but the Hungarian counterpart that I had in Budapest was amazing! After a very long day we headed back to the hotel to get a good night’s rest for our last day in Prague.

Tuesday October 30th

Tuesday ended up being a fairly short day. We were all really tired from our long days of sight seeing and well we had seen almost everything we had wanted to see. We did get up and go to the National Museum. I will say only one thing about the museum… They have a lot and I mean a lot of rocks but they don’t have a Petoskey stone and they also have a lot of stuffed animals but they don’t have a normal squirrel. The museum ended up being something different than what I expected and barely talked about Czech history or about the Czech Republic. After the museum, we finished our tour of the old village and then headed back to the hotel for a nap and then dinner at the 4 star hotel next door. We went to sleep pretty early since we had to be up at 5am to catch our bus to Budapest.

Wednesday October 31st

We woke up very early on Halloween to board our bus to Budapest. I must say, I wasn’t looking forward to an 7 hour bus ride but I was pleasantly surprised at the service we received on our bus. Student Agency was the bus company and the seats were roomy, plenty of room for storage and also had movies en route (in English too!). We also had a bus attendant who about every hour and a half would ask you if you wanted anything hot to drink like a hot chocolate, cappuccino or coffee. I sat next to a fellow American who was on his way to Romania to work. He seemed like the type of guy who just backpacks all over the place and picks up odd jobs while he is there, he was a pretty cool guy to talk to and pretty laid back. Our bus from Prague to Budapest took us through Slovakia. At the border of Slovakia the customs agent just boarded the bus and looked at people’s passport not really checking too seriously for anyone’s information. As we took off, the bus attendant came rushing to the back of the bus and started yelling at this couple. She was yelling in English so I understood. I didn’t even realize it but the couple had gone into the bathroom on the bus just before arriving at customs and stayed there until we had exited the customs area. They didn’t have a passport and were afraid of getting kicked off the bus, but the fact of the matter is that the bus company is held responsible in that situation since they are basically smuggling an immigrant into the country. After that little incident it was smooth sailing all the way to the Hungarian border were we met customs once again. This time he was collecting a few passports and mine was one of them that he took. I found something interesting out about border controls at this moment in time. The customs agent simply took my passport amongst the stack of others that he had grabbed and headed to his little office, without any of the people whose passports he took. When he was done checking the passports he just handed the whole stack back to the bus attendant and then the bus took off. The attendant then walked down the aisle and handed the passports back to the people who they belonged to. I thought that this was interesting since everyone always tells you not to let your passport leave your sight when you are travelling especially at the border because without the passport we wouldn’t be able to enter back into France or leave Hungary for that matter.

We ended up getting into Budapest about an hour and a half late because of a really bad traffic jam that we ran into upon entering the city of Budapest. Danielle (a friend of ours) met us at the bus station and took us to the hotel that we would be staying at. When we went to the hotel we took the metro and well it just so happened that as we got off of our first metro and we were in the process of changing lines, a couple so much in love was walking hand in hand and then realized someone was heading in between them. Instead of just letting go of their hands they decided to raise their arms and well they clothes lined this very old woman, right in front of me!!! I was completely stunned for a second and wasn’t sure what had just happened but it was true they had definitely just clothes lined her! What a way to show up in Budapest! Anyways the hotel we were staying at just so happened to be in the same building as their apartment/hotel that they were staying in. We dropped our stuff off and headed downtown to get dinner. I was really excited to eat some authentic Hungarian food and when we got to the restaurant we ate at I was really happen to learn that they had goulash soup and chicken paprikash. (by the way chicken paprikash is not just chicken paprikash in Hungarian it has a different word but I did not write it down ) The meal was excellent even though it was prepared very differently from what I have in the US. After dinner, we headed out to a bar for a little bit then returned to the hotel so that we could catch up on sleep that we had lost, since I definitely could not sleep on the bus.

Thursday November 1st

On All Saints Day we quickly realized that most everything was closed, rightfully so being that it was a national holiday and all. We ended up making most of the day and went to Hereo’s Square and the outside of the Opera House. After this we headed to Marguerite Island which is located in the middle of the Danube. We ended up renting a 5 person bike car and riding around the island for an hour seeing all the sights on the island. The fall colors were amazing on the island and it was a pleasant bike ride. We went home early since we were all going to be dressing up fancy for dinner since it was Juli’s 21st birthday and we were going out to dinner. We went to this Japanese Sushi/ Stir Fry place which had the food on tiny plates on a conveyor belt that went around the restaurant. It was an alright meal, I’d of rather ate at a more traditional Hungarian place but it was Juli’s birthday so I went along. Either way it was an early night because some of us weren’t feeling too well so we just went back and went to bed.

Friday November 2nd

Our last day in Budapest. We woke up and went to the House of Terror which is located on 60 Andrassy Ut. It was the home to the Soviet and German Secret Police during the communist reign in Budapest. In the building they tortured people and kept them imprisoned for weeks or months at a time. Today, the building is a museum and memorial to all the things that happened there and it was a very well done museum. I bought a book explaining the entire period along with pictures of the museum for you all to see when I return home. After the House of Terror we headed to the national museum where we got a great view at the history of Hungary and the traditions of the country. The museum was extremely well done and it was very cool to see the history of the country where my family comes from. After the museum it was already getting dark so we headed to see parliament. The parliament building was modeled after the London parliament and is located directly on the Danube River. We saw parliament from both sides of the river, thus the Buda and the Pest side. The Buda side is much more beautiful as you see the building just towering over the river, and in addition you can see the chain bridge off to the right. The pictures that were taking at night were taking from the Buda side of the river. After taking many photos we headed to eat at a restaurant that served mostly Hungarian food. I ordered some fried cheese and the spicy veal medallions. The veal medallions were extremely good and they were stuffed inside a crepe type pancake which made it even better. For dessert, the owner served us a big plate of bishop bread but instead of being made with nuts it was made with fruit in the middle and it was amazing.

Saturday November 3rd

Saturday morning Juli, Tessa and Danielle wanted to go to the mineral baths. Carolyn and myself decided that we had not done enough sight seeing so we took off to walk across the chain bridge and take a stroll around Pest. I am thankful we did go to the bridge because we saw an amazing view of both sides of the river and the parliament building. Our sight seeing trip was short lived though as we had to get back and head to the airport. We decided to get there a little earlier this time so that we could make sure we made it on the plane. We got there in plenty of time and boarded our plan back to Paris. Our flight actually flew in the Paris Beauvais airport which is about an hour’s long train ride from the actual city of Paris. We knew this ahead of time, and had already booked a train ticket to Paris. Upon our arrival in Beauvais, we flagged a taxi and took it to the train station. It is amazing how comforting it is to be back in a country where we can communicate openly with the people and understand what is being said! We got to the train station and took our hour long train to Paris Gare du Nord upon which we took another taxi and headed to Gare du Lyon. We then got on the train all the way to Clermont and at about 11:30 at night we arrived in Clermont. At this time the busses are not running and its about a 50 minute walk home from the train station, so we decided we would try to catch the last tram back home. After getting lost for a few minutes we found our way to the station and got on the tram and went home…

Reflections

All in all it was a very good vacation and I think we made pretty good use of our time. I was a little disappointed with how much we didn’t see in Budapest but with the holiday and other constraints we saw what we could see in the time given. I hope to make it back to Budapest before I go home so that I can see more of the city and make it to the Harley Davidson Dealership in Budapest. Eastern Europe is very different from where we are in Clermont but it is so awesome that I hope to travel more through Eastern Europe in the time to come!!

If you want to look at pictures, since I took over 650 of them on this vacation instead of putting my usual slideshows I am going to simply repost the link to my photos which you can find at www.picasaweb.com/jonrsmart or you can get there by clicking on the study abroad pictures link on the left side of this blog!!

Comment away and I would love to hear from all of you – but don’t forget to tell me who you are!!

Love to all.

Jon