Look at the map of Hungary about 50 kilometers north of Budapest, and you will notice how the Danube twists and turns in its flow, before changing direction completely from roughly eastward to roughly southward. The banks of the river on that stretch are colloquially known as the Danube Bend and are home to several lovely towns that frequently feature on lists of top Budapest day-trip destinations. My plans included visiting three of them, starting with Esztergom. Those plans unfortunately only partially came to fruition.
The capital of Hungary between the 10th and 13th centuries, Esztergom is one of the oldest towns in the country. It is also the seat of the Primate, making the towering 19th-century basilica the most important Catholic place of worship in Hungary. 
Walking up to the basilica, I noticed that it was cordoned off as if for construction work. Surely enough, a bored lady at the visitor center booth informed me that the place was closed for renovations, with only the crypt accessible to visitors. I habitually exclude the churches from my pre-trip research into accessibility; grandest cathedrals of the world aside, my attitude towards missing out on seeing a church’s interior is usually pretty relaxed, notwithstanding my well-established affinity for exploring ecclesiastical architecture. But had I known about the closure beforehand – the information online is not too hard to find – I might have changed my plans completely away from Esztergom, given that the basilica was one of the three sights that I specifically targeted in town.
Crypts on their own merit do not interest me that much, so I moved on to the Esztergom Castle, located right next to the grand church.
Would you be awfully surprised if I mentioned that it was a potential World Heritage property, and that’s why it was included in my plans? Of course, you wouldn’t! The castle is part of the small serial tentative submission called Royal Seats in Esztergom, Visegrád. The part of the description related to the castle emphasizes its medieval architecture and artistic value, as well as the Italian Renaissance influence, but it is hard to call the place extraordinary, even as it is not without interest for a casual castle explorer, with a number of passages, chambers, and vaulted ceilings that reasonably impress.
Small expositions, ranging from kitchenware to weaponry to crown and episcopal jewels, provide additional measure of interest.
But the most impressive part of the castle is its views from several terraces and elevated rooms. Here’s one to the basilica.
The Danube view, with the St Ignacius of Loyola Church and the Christian Museum in the foreground, and the Mária Valéria Bridge connecting Esztergom with the Slovak town of Štúrovo in the background.
A couple of more “artistic” renderings of roughly the same perspective.
The opposite-direction view is headlined by a small church on a hill.
The rain that informed the length of my stay at Pannonhalma Abbey did not let up while I was in Esztergom. I wanted to walk a bit around town, but it was too miserable outside. The weather app gave me a modicum of hope for improvement in a couple of hours. I still had a chance to fit Visegrád into my itinerary for the day, but I also wanted to explore another attraction in Esztergom, so I opted for a sit-down late lunch to wait out the worst of the rain.
That other attraction was the aforementioned Mária Valéria Bridge. Crossing national borders on foot without as much as a cursory check of identity papers is a pretty rare opportunity even in today’s integrated Europe. That simple act of walking over the bridge from one country to another and back was likely my highlight of the day. I am a pretty uncomplicated person in terms of what makes me happy.
Here is the bridge at its Hungarian end.
Entering Slovakia.
The opposite view for those entering Hungary.
There is, in fact, a thick red line running across the middle of the bridge marking the actual boundary. SR stands for Slovenská Republika, which is Slovakia’s official name in Slovak, and M is for Magyarország, which is Hungary in Hungarian.
And what bridge these days is not adorned by love locks?!
The bridge at the Slovak end.
Esztergom Basilica and the castle are best viewed from the opposite side of the river.
And a close-up of the Hungarian side of the Danube a bit farther downriver.
Finally, the view of the bridge from almost under it on Esztergom’s side.
In a totally unexpected twist, once I pulled out from my parking spot near where that last picture above was taken, the only available road turn took me onto the bridge and into Slovakia again. I went around a block in Štúrovo for the purposes of turning around, crossed the bridge for the fourth time in about an hour, and was then on my way back to Budapest via Visegrád.
By the time I drove through Visegrád, around 4:45 in the afternoon, the skies were already fully dark, so I proceeded without stopping. Visegrád fell completely off my itinerary as a result. I could blame the weather – this was the only rainy day of my entire trip, prompting me into food-consuming idleness indoors for a non-trivial portion of the afternoon. But then, in dry weather, I would have swapped my lunch time for walking around Esztergom anyway. In hindsight, the tentative intention of fitting three destinations into roughly nine hours of daylight, of which driving took close to four, was overly ambitious.
But I actually did visit three different places that one day. The other one in addition to Pannonhalma and Esztergom was chronologically the first – early in the morning. At some point when I was planning the trip, I had a brilliant idea of getting into the car before sunrise that day in order to have breakfast in a café on the shore of Lake Balaton. That’s just an hour away from Budapest, not exactly in the direction of Pannonhalma, but workable if you plan to make it to the abbey by its visitor opening hour of 10 am.
The plan was executed flawlessly – and unsuccessfully in its key aspect. I arrived in Balatonakarattya at the time I planned (and later at the abbey almost on the dot). The shores of Balaton, however, were covered in fog. I did have a pretty nice breakfast in a café overlooking the lake but hardly saw anything. A couple of barely passable pictures – prodigiously treated with dehaze and other enhancement tools in Lightroom – are included in this post despite the location being nowhere near Esztergom, as they certainly do not deserve a separate entry.
And somewhere between Balaton and Pannonhalma the rain started and continued to follow me throughout the day. But I already mentioned that a couple of times.
The following day, thankfully, it was mostly sunny as I continued my explorations first at the World Heritage village of Hollókő and then in the pretty town of Szentendre.
This article is also featured on GPSmyCity. To download this article for offline reading or create a self-guided walking tour to visit the attractions highlighted in this article, go to Walking Tours and Articles in Esztergom.