Right. Budapest.

We took the train from Vienna Sunday morning. It was only a three hour ride, but…smoky!! I was ok until the last hour, but then it really started to get to me. The only booth with seats available was a smoking booth, but it didn’t seem to matter where we sat; it was all smoking all the time.

We tried taking the metro to our hotel, but it was out of order so we took the replacment bus. What we didn’t know was that a) you have to validate the ticket before getting on, and b) transit inspectors hang out near the train station trying to catch unsuspecting tourists who don’t know point a. So a whole slew of inspectors come up to us and start yelling at us. Only one was a big guy, who was actually very nice, but this one little bitch kept getting in my face and yelling, “Problem! Problem!” They fined us each 2,000 forints (which is about CAD$13), I cursed at them many times in English, and we walked the rest of the way to the hotel. At this point I was in a pretty bad mood. Welcome to fucking Budapest.

Determined not to let that ruin our stay, we went out in search of some lunch. We ate at a little Italian bar that had good — and very rich — food. I had tagliatelli and a Hungarian beer I’d never heard of. We only had part of the day to work with, so we walked over to the Buda side of the river (our hotel was in Pest), took the funicular up the hill and explored some of the touristy things like the castle, the palace and the fisherman’s bastion. Got some great shots of Pest too.

We walked back across the bridge to Pest, through a big street festival. The bridge was closed to cars so everyone was walking across it, with folk dancing at one end and beer tables at the other. We sat and listened to old ladies singing old folk songs, drinking our drinks in the afternoon sunshine.

We went back to the hotel for a bit of rest. The hotel, by the way, was obviously decorated in the 80s, which fit much of Budapest; most of the music I heard was American 80s music, the decor was very much from the 80s, and so on. Make sense, I suppose, given the political and economic changes of the time. Anyway, we relaxed for a few hours before going to dinner at some place called something-Karolyi-something. The meal was fantastic — I had this chicken, apple, date and walnut dish — and we ate in a grden right next to a small outdoor theatre, which made things pretty lively…the play was apparently about some man’s descent into madness, so we’d hear the occasional scream or outburst from across the way. It was a fantastic meal though.

We walked along the Danube for a bit, sat and looked at the buildings lit up over in Pest, and then sauntered back to the hotel.

The next day, Monday, we ate in the giant hotel breakfast room, packed and checked out. We walked around a bit, ran a few errands, and sat in a park for a bit before going off to see more of the city. Our first stop: St. Stephen’s Basilica. It’s stunning inside, though not old: much of it is from the last 20 or 30 years. My brother and I walked up the stairs to the top of the dome, took some shots of the city and then took the lift down. Backwards, I know.

After stopping for a quick drink in the square near the basilica, we rode the metro & tram to Margaret Island. It reminded me a lot of Centre Island in Toronto: kids, waterparks, bike rentals, hot dog stands (one of which we hit), lots of trees & grass. Nellie and I sat in a park by a water fountain which would spray water in various ways along to classical music played over loudspeakers. Like Symphony of Fire but, uh, with water. We took a long walk back to the hotel, broken up by stops for beer & dessert. We collected our bags from the hotel, piled into a cab and got to the airport for our flight back to London.

And then the Budapest travel fun continued: our flight was delayed by about 90 minutes, made worse by the fact that EasyJet doesn’t inform you about why there’s a delay or even that there is a delay…there’s just no plane. The flight goes ok, but the immigration lineup at Luton takes us another 90 minutes because they only have one guy working the non-UK line. At this point it was after 1 AM, so we were ready to go home, but the cab company we’d spoken with 90 minutes earlier (who assured us there’d be lots of cars avilable) now said there’d be a two hour wait for a car. Asshats. We bit the bullet and took a black cab home. I didn’t dare do the conversion in my head. But we finally got home, and into bed, and slept (unintentionally) until 11:00.

Eastern European leg of the tour: complete.

[update –> oh man, I forgot one of the best parts: as we were passing through security at the Budapest airport, I threw the few remaining forints I had in my pocket into one of the little trays and walked through. No beeping, so I was frisk-free. But when I went to collect my coins, they were gone. Taken. I saw them on the table behind the scanner, but the dude didn’t want to give them back. Now, 41 forints is worth about a quarter, so I wasn’t too worried about it, but…still! That’s kinda weird, no?]