Buda & Pest, once two separate cities but now joined and known to us as Budapest. First impressions — there are no trees, no greenery of any type except in parks and a few early spring flower beds. Okay that was the first impression! Second impression — beautiful buildings, mostly narrow streets, a sense of history, modern and old mixed together, cool sculpture, and massive monuments. Must be all European cities are like this!
Let’s step back a bit. Arriving at the airport and finding our way to our flat, amazingly easy. Only one wrong turn. Our directions for taking public transport say we will need to purchase bus tickets, a quick inguiry at a newstand illicits “but of course”. Tickets purchased, we find our bus, get on, validate our ticket (apparently very important but I haven’t figured out why yet) and we are off. Over to the Metro station, transfer, on the Metro. First two stages complete. It’s wonderful on the Metro, underground, nothing to see, relaxing. Hoping that it will resurface and because we have some extra time, we decide to stay on until the end of the line. Nope, no surfacing, but at the end of the line, when we do finally emerge into the late spring sun, we find this wonderful Farmer’s Market! Yea, our first unintentional gem of a find. We are even stopped by a nice young women who offers us a view of the lunar eclipse through a series of special lenses. Yea, recipients of an act of random kindness. The eclipse looked pretty cool as well.
However, we are not getting anywhere in finding our flat. So back into the Metro, get off at the right spot, catch the tram, get off at another right spot, oops take a wrong turn, correct mistake, find flat, get keys, directions for how things work, poke around in the flat … nap. After all, we have been up since 1:30 in the morning and it is now 2:00 in the afternoon.
Naps are good, I like naps!
We get up around 4:00 and head out. Just a wander around. We find the big Jewish synagogue, I suppose saying Jewish is bit redundant isn’t it? Make our way to the River Danube. Stroll along the promenade, end up at the Szecheny Lanchid (lion gate?), espy Buda Castle Hill, the Parliment buildings and just the tip of Margaret Island. All places we want to visit over the course of our week here.
By now the sun is down and the fast is over so we spend a few moments looking for a place to break our Fast and celebrate Naw Ruz. We settle upon Spinoza restaurant. Nicely old world, charmingly appointed, not too classy but plenty stylish with live piano classical music included. Settle upon their tradional Hungarian special three course meal. Soup clear goose or goulash, Main course tradional goulash with spaetzle or roast goose leg and Desserts strudel and ice cream or hazelnut pudding balls and whipped cream. I’m thinking this is a $75 – $80 meal as the price was only listed in Euro’s and am pleasantly surprised with a total bill, tip included, of $55CDN dollars! A great meal as well by the way.
Wander home, takes a bit of figuring out, turns out we were only about four blocks away and lights out at 10:00 or so. We think we are going to like Buda and Pest!
