Szentendre and More!

Previously on Joel’s Journeys and Jaunts, I left you at lunch in Visegrád, the second of three towns on the Danube Bend full-day tour I took today. After lunch, the bus drove off, with me on it, to the third town, Szentendre.

On the way to Szentendre, the guide again spoke almost continuously about Szentendre, as he did on the bus to and between towns this morning. That is to say, in the morning, he spoke about the towns we visited then, not about Szentendre. But you might have guessed that.

(Having said that, if you read my morning entry, you know he provided some alleged information that made me suspicious of his accuracy. So, caveat emptor.)

Like the first two towns the tour visited, Szentendre started as a Roman fortress around which a town grew. Later, after the Romans were long gone and the Turks of the Ottoman Empire assumed control of Hungary, they pretty much depopulated Szentendre.

Later still, I don’t remember when, Greeks and Serbs gravitated to the town and built it up again.

Then, I think it was in the late 1920s, but I might be misremembering, artists started moving in. Still today, Szentendre is known as an artists’ colony.

By the way, Szentendre is one of the Danube Bend towns, but I don’t know if it’s technically on the Danube River. When I looked at a map, I saw that Szentendre is on what looks like a channel that splits off from the Danube, taking a slight shortcut through the Danube’s bend before rejoining the main river.

It looks natural, not like a canal. I couldn’t find out whether it has its own name, so it might be considered a part of the Danube. If not, it’s close enough.

In Szentendre

We had about an hour and a quarter in Szentendre. Before we got off the bus, the guide said we had a choice that we could each make independently. We could either head off to explore the town on our own, or we could join him on a short walk, during which he would point out some interesting parts of town. If we joined him, we’d still have time to wander around town on our own, just less time.

However, before we were allowed to do either of those things, he insisted, brooking no dissent, that we, every one of us on the bus, without exception, must follow him a short distance so he could show us …

No. Damn. I almost killed the surprise. I’m going to hold off telling you what he showed us, thereby allowing the suspense to build to a fever pitch.

If the anticipation overwhelms you, you can always scroll down right away, but that would make you a party pooper.

Don’t worry. It’s not going to be a long post. You can hang on.

After the guide showed us that mandatory thing, I chose to follow him on his little walkabout. The town is small and very charming. Charming sounds so cliché and overused, doesn’t it? But I can’t think of a better word. Wait. There’s a thesaurus on this machine. Lovely. Adorable. Precious. Quaint. There are some other words. Choose one.

We walked along the main drag, which is a cobblestone street reserved for pedestrians. Some of the side streets are also cobblestone pedestrian streets for a piece. The buildings lining the central streets are all low-rise and cute. They’re painted in summery pastel colours. On the street level, they contain shops, restaurants, bars, and small museums.

The guide pointed out a Serb Orthodox Church that looked like a Catholic church. He said that when the Serbs moved in, they wanted a church and rather than build their own, they took over a Catholic church. They left the exterior pretty much as it was, rather than converting it to a Serbian Orthodox style. But they redid the interior in that style. We didn’t go inside.

I believe there is also at least one Serbian Orthodox church that was purpose-built in that style in Szentendre.

The guide also drew our attention to the fact that Main Street and side streets were not straight. They all had some curve to them. They weren’t wildly curvy, but neither were any of the streets perfectly straight. He also showed us a side street that wasn’t a street per se, but rather a staircase.

He pointed out a Christmas store with a stationary Santa character parked out front. It wore the full Santa regalia, which seemed entirely out of place on a late June day when the temperature exceeded 30°C. The guide told us that the Christmas store is open every day of the year except one. He made us guess which day that was. Obviously, everyone guessed correctly. The Christmas store is open every day except Christmas. The guide found that very funny.

He also pointed to a restaurant with a wine museum in the basement. He suggested that it might be a good choice for when we were on our own because it’s quite cool down there. (I didn’t go.)

The guide made a tactical error. He brought us to a spot where he could point out a plethora of ice cream parlours around that intersection. One of the people on the tour asked him which ice cream places were the best. The guide pointed to one just behind where we were standing. The man then asked if he could buy an ice cream. The guide responded, “Sure.” The man then asked, “And you’ll wait for us?”

That threw the guide. I think he intended to go further. Instead, he ended the tour, but he pointed down the street to where there’s a marzipan shop with a museum that displays figures of famous people like Michael Jackson and Lady Diana done in marzipan. I think he intended to continue the walk that way, but the group broke up when some of us went to buy ice cream.

I read in a few places that Szentendre has a Mediterranean vibe. I can see that. It’s endearing. Because of the vibe and the artist colony, and because it’s very close to Budapest, it allegedly gets a lot of tourists. But it was fairly quiet today. Then again, today is a Wednesday, not a weekend, so maybe that had something to do with it.

More pictures from Szentendre:

Szentendre Back to Budapest

About that special thing that the guide insisted we all see before heading off to explore Szentendre. It was a dock on the river. We had to be there by 4:45. Yes, we didn’t go back to Budapest on the bus. We went by boat. That wasn’t a shock to me. I knew it was part of the tour. But I hope it caught you by surprise. What a treat.

The boat didn’t belong to the tour company. The company bought a block of tickets for it, as did a bunch of independent passengers. Anyone can buy tickets for the same trip. The capacity of the boat was much larger than the capacity of the bus I was on. So, if you’re in Budapest and you want to take a side trip to Szentendre, the boat is an enjoyable option.

I don’t have a lot to say about the boat trip. It made two stops in Budapest, one on the Buda side and then one almost directly across the river on the Pest side. The trip from Szentendre to the Buda stop took about one hour. Then it was another couple of minutes to the Pest stop, where I got off.

From shortly after it left Szentendre, during the time the boat was in that channel I mentioned, both banks were almost entirely forested. With just the occasional residence. After it rejoined the wider Danube main channel, it remained largely forested, but less so, until it got closer to Budapest.

It proved to be a very relaxing way to journey back to Budapest and made for an enjoyable end to the tour.

Pictures from on the boat ride back to Budapest:

PROGRAMMING NOTE: I’ll be leaving late tomorrow morning to move on to another city in Hungary. But I won’t post a Budapest summary here. I’ll be back in Budapest for one night before catching my flight back home. I’ll have the afternoon before that night to spend in Budapest. I’ll append a summary to that post.

Because I won’t have time to do anything in Budapest tomorrow morning, I will publish only one entry tomorrow, about my afternoon in my next destination.