Last Updated on May 30, 2019 by PowersToTravel
We arranged the Danube Bend trip through Viator.
The promised taxi driver picked us up promptly and took us to a staging area over near the river. We waited quite a while for the other taxis to pick up all the remaining people. It was a full house, that is, a full bus. Once again, because we were first, we were able to snag the front seats in the bus.
After a nice ride through the countryside out to Esztergom, we made the obligatory crossing into Slovakia (no passport check as it is all the EU). The stop was of value, as we got some decent pictures of the great basilica across the river. Note that this picture is not best taken in the morning – afternoon is much preferable for a photographer.
Esztergom Basilica
Then the bus took us back over the bridge and up to the basilica, the largest Roman Catholic church, or any possibly any denomination, in Hungary. There we were subjected to the embarrassing herding of the sheep. We followed our guide with her flag/umbrella around the exterior, and eventually inside the church. I think that was the first time I’ve had to participate in such a parade. At one point Greg even volunteered to hold her umbrella cum flag as she went in for tickets, accommodating tour guide that he is.
Greg Powers the tour guide
If there had been any other way to see the town, I would have taken it. Oops, as I look it up on Google right now, I see that we could have taken a public bus.
After Esztergom we headed back towards Budapest, stopping at Visegrad Castle for lunch. To say we saw “Visegrad Castle” sounds much more exciting than it was. We drove up the mountain, viewed the Castle from the windows of the bus, then arrived at a restaurant which clearly catered to tour groups. Seated at tables for six, the meal was actually fairly good. The photo opportunities from the mountain at the location of the restaurant however were poor though, due to overgrowth of trees.
Then we drove on to Szentendre, which turned out to be a cute village at the edge of the Danube. On a Sunday in late September, the village was mobbed. We could hardly make our way through the plaza. The best pictures were UP (and perhaps earlier in the day.)
Szentendre
Since we had had our fill of Hungarian souvenir shopping at the Central Market the previous day, nothing in the shops appealed to us. We hung around for a while, then headed out to the river boat. Here our guide led us astray. We would have been happy to board the boat earlier, which would have ensured us a seat outside, however she had insisted that the entire bus-load meet her at the edge of the water at a certain time to obtain our tickets, a time much later than many of the other boat travelers. So, we ended up inside, luckily able to sit together.
The trip was uneventful; we passed St. Margaret’s Island and the Parliament Building on our return, and alighted at the quai. No taxi offered now, we made our way to our hotel on foot.
All in all, taking the group trip probably was the best use of our time outside the city; while we could have taken the bus to Esztergom, getting to the top of the mountain would have been impossible without our own car. I would be very interested to know if anyone has done this day trip using public transportation and if it is possible to visit both Esztergom and Szentendre conveniently in the same day.
We decided to eat in the city center, and made Hungarian Goulash a priority. We bumped into a sidewalk café with a Hungarian Tourist menu and decided to stop. It wasn’t a good decision because the food was poor. We were happy we had tasted Goulash in Romania and Bulgaria because our introduction to Hungarian was less than auspicious. I’m sorry not to be able to name this restaurant; I must have wanted to block it out of my mind, because I didn’t note the name in my notebook, and we paid cash, so there’s no credit card record either.
