Hungry in Hungary - part 1

Why Hungary you ask? Well ask Emma (Cath's sis) and Delano I say - it was to catch up with them that we decided to go to Budapest. They were doing a bit of a European session - travelling around visiting place after place and it just-so-turned out that our dates and their dates saw us both free at the time that they were in Hungary.

Before we left, we used all the resources at our disposal - Kati - our Hungarian friend at our Dublin church was a great help - and gave us some last-minute advice on the church steps before we left.

Of course, we rushed to the airport only to find that our flight was delayed. I mention this because our experience in Budapest with public transport and flights, etc was such an amazing surprise. 'Logic' told us that Ireland should be up-to-date, punctual and impressive while my expectations for Hungary were less-so.
In reality, it was the transport in Hungary that put the Irish transport to shame. They are so jacked-up over there. Wow!
don't forget thunderstorm

No sooner had we landed, Cath was making us a new friend - Noami - a young Hungarian lady who lives just outside Cork but who was originally from Budapest. It turned out she lived on the street of our hotel and so she directed us which trains to catch there, helped us buy tickets (English isn't so commonplace in Hungary so we were very lucky to have her) and chatted with us the whole way. She even bought us some Hungarian snacks - winning us over big-time.



The next day Emz and Del-boy arrived and so after catching up with Noami in the morning, we headed off to pick them up and take them back to the hotel. Then we went out and snapped a few photies.

We found this statue of some dude thjat looked like death....

... and wandered around a bit.



This above was Millenium square (also known as Heroes square) - Seeing as you've seen so many of the same old photos, we thought a different view would be appreciated.

Then we decided we'd take Noami out for supper (but asked her to choose the place) as a thankyou. But SHE ended up taking us out! - and it was a stunning meal at a medieval-type place with tankards and wenches and huge plates of food!



Soup came first - in a hollowed-out roll.



Then the platter, and a belly-dancer that made Delboy and I slightly uncomfortable.



But the food was too much. Five of us, eating our full couldn't even damage the platter and we ended up taking a massive doggie bag home with us. We had no option but to summon the waiter and show the white flag - we surrender - take this plate away!

Before we left I had a piccie with a few of the barmaids... mmm, barmaids...


The next day we headed out to see the sights. Emz and Cath decided to run up an escalator that wasn't working. I thought we'd lost them for a while - they nearly punctured a foofie valve running up the like, 300 steps. Actually it wasn't so bad, but they told us it was a big deal so I included this photo for them.

Parliament was stunning...

Emz and Del-boy were jumping for joy in the park.

We hired one of those 4-man pedal bikes and cycled around the island on the Danube. It was a pretty big island and took us a few hours.

The pedal car was quite cool - we all took turns steering. The girls typically would sit at the back and not pedal, but us boys are used to doing all the work for our girls!

Yep, it was a lot of fun.

Along the ride we came across a sight or two and stopped for a breather more than anything else...

There was also this amazing musical fountain... well, there was music playing over a sound system nearby and the water was timed to rise and fall and spray, etc according to what the music was doing. The musical was uber-cool - some classical type stuff (don't ask me who composed it) and as it hit the crescendos, the water would rise like, 15 metres into the air!

The next day we wanted to get out of Budapest to see a bit more of Hungary. We'd heard there was a great village called Sezanchandre (i think) not so far away so we caught the train there and did a bit of sight-seeing.

This was the centre of the village...

We also popped into a marzipan museum. I think every building in the village was a museum actually. There would be a shop selling postcards that was called 'The toffee museaum' or something random - but it would just be a normal shop - with a room upstairs that was the supposed museum. Admission - a few euros. Probably just a way of getting us to go in. We aren't interested in toffee - but we did check out the marzipan museum cos it looked pretty busy and thought someone must know something we don't.

This was one of the sculptures - made entirely from marzipan...

Then as we began to head off, the caricature dude that wasn't having much business offered us a deal - two caricatures for 10 euro. We couldn't say no - so the girls sat down, Cath first to have their pictures done. I maintain Cath's boobs, teeth and forehead should have been bigger and Emma's boobs were too big but hey, no-one asked for my opinion.



We walked around a bit more, had some ice-cream and lunch by the river and headed back to Budapest.