Budapest, day 6: Ancient Budapest

The Buda side of Budapest was once a major outpost of the Roman Empire. Though I was still quite tired from all the walking the day before, I was determined to see the Roman ruins. The girlfriend of one of my husband's colleagues also wanted to see this, so we went together. It was nice to have some company.

Aquincum is outside of the usual tourist areas, so we took a commuter train to get there. Right by the train stop were the ruins of an amphitheater. There were also remains on an aqueduct along the street.

The big thing was the ruins of a commercial center and several houses which were all now part of the museum. While these ruins were easy to find, the entrance to the museum was much trickier. The sign by the street, only in Hungarian, might lead one to believe the place was only open certain weekends (in retrospect it probably referred to some special event, but it was all that could be seen from the street.) We did eventually find our way in, though the entrance was cleverly disguised as an abandoned car dealership. We didn't find any place to pay admission, so we just wandered in. There were plenty of people working there, but they didn't seem to pay any attention to us.

The ruins were mostly about knee high and not particularly impressive. Signs pointed out what the buildings had been used for, but it somehow failed to spark my interest. I wondered what was original and what had been restored. The remains of a mosaic floor in a bath house were kind of impressive, but the statues which had been gathered up and placed under a roof for protection, didn't do much for me.

On our way out, someone stopped us and told us we needed to buy tickets. They pointed to the first building which had been closed, but this time to the back side. This turned out to be the entrance to the museum. As far as artifacts go, I think they were better and better explained at the historical museum at Buda palace. There was a large exhibit on what had been found while building a highway in the area. It would appear that this highway was built on a connect-the-dots of ancient graveyards from different periods. If so much was under the highway, it makes one wonder what's under everything else.

I was pretty walked out by the time we were done here, so we headed back towards the hotel. While we'd taken a more circuitous path to the train station, we stumbled on a stairway on the way home which would take us right back to the castle district. It turned out to be a whole lot of stairs, and since we didn't find anyplace that inspired us for lunch, we decided to go for cake at my favorite coffee and cake restaurant. For the first time this trip, I was rather warm, so I tried ice cream this time. It was pretty good, but the cake was probably the better choice.

After that, I had a couple hours at the hotel to rest before joining my husband and his colleagues for a fancy dinner.