19th January - Budapest
Trip Start
Dec 26, 2008
1
24
28
Trip End
Jan 26, 2009
Budapest,
Hungary
Monday, January 19, 2009
Things looked good at first as the sky was blue and clear and the sun was shining. We went downstairs to breakfast. Penny chose a delicious omelette and Darren chose scrambled eggs with ham and cheese that looked good at first but unfortunately were very very undercooked at one end. Yuck. He generously said he was glad he had got them and not Penny with her egg "issues" but even he struggled. Bread and coffee were both delicious.
After breakfast we took the metro line 1, the oldest metro line in continental Europe, almost to the end. We were very impressed with the cleanliness of the stations and the lack of graffiti, which we put down to the very strong official presence - we have already had our tickets checked more often than in the whole of the rest of our Europe trip
Chain Bridge
! We emerged from the metro at the square at the top of Andrassy ut, where we could admire the large monument and two museums, which we saved for a day with less beautiful weather. We walked around the City Park and looked into the Szechenyi baths - another activity for another day. When we walked into one entrance an attendant saw us looking like tourists and pointed upwards to make sure we saw the ceiling, which was beautiful.We walked all the way down Andrassy ut, looking at the lovely 19th century buildings along the way. As we walked past Burger King, Darren thought he would go in and use the conveniences. Penny helpfully pointed out the public toilet sign, so he went there instead. Penny, after waiting for a while, thought she may as well go as well and went into the female entrance, which actually connected with the male entrance - a good thing, as it happened. When she came out she was surprised to find Darren there, looking grateful and hustling her quickly back up the steps and out of there, and also to find that she didn't have to pay. It turned out that Darren had only had a big note to pay for his visit, so had had to wait around while the male attendant went to get change. While he was waiting he was being propositioned in no uncertain terms by the female attendant, who dealt with the language barrier by stroking his face and her own breasts. The arrival on the scene of his girlfriend was rather timely
Corso restaurant
. Again, while Darren was fairly traumatised by the experience, he was much braver than Penny would have been.We reached the end of the avenue and decided that we should make the most of the weather by going up to Buda Castle, so we crossed the river via the impressive Chain Bridge and took the old (1870-something?) funicular to the castle district. We walked past the Hungarian President's offices, where the strong odour of dog poo turned out to be emanating from - you guessed it - Darren's shoe. It really wasn't his finest day. We checked out the fantastic views from Fisherman's Bastion, before visiting the church, Matyas Templon. Unfortunately it was covered with scaffolding on the outside, although stunning on the inside, with the Eastern influence leading to lots of painted decoration over all the surfaces. We walked around the rest of the castle district, looking both at the lovely buildings and at the spectacular views, especially of the Parliament, until we decided it was time for a bite to eat. At the Cafe Miro, we had goulash soup and potato soup and shared a Hungarian specialty sponge "cake" that was more like a trifle, except without the custard.
We walked around the Royal Palace from the outside, then took the funicular back down and went back across the Danube, which seemed to have much less ice floating in it than in the morning, and wandered through the shopping streets between there and the hotel, which magically appeared at the end of the road just as we decided to consult our map. It was now late afternoon so we trudged back up the many stairs for some bludging and washing before considering the next meal.
We wandered the streets to the west of our hotel looking for a promising place to eat dinner. We eventually settled on a place called Corso, where Darren had stuffed cabbage with a sausage, which he liked, and Penny had extremely ordinary chicken paprika. For some reason we were not allowed to order a salad with it. Darren restricted himself to one beer and Penny had a glass of wine that tasted like nothing. Both of us, unnecessarily, had dessert - the sponge cake for Darren and chestnut puree with chocolate sauce for Penny. This was pretty good.
We are hoping for more good weather (in spite of the forecasts) and a better day for Darren tomorrow!
