Budapest - we board boat

Saturday, May 21-half way though our adventure

Last night we had a funny experience on TV here in Budapest. We were flipping through the international channels on Hungarian television and came across a Japanese movie about Samurai and Geishas, all of them dubbed in German! It is a “small world after all.”

Today we spent much of the day exploring Budapest by ourselves. We took the local bus over the Chain Bridge to the Pest side of the river and then walked along the riverfront for about 2 miles to the large Budapest public market. We were delighted with this old but very lovely building that looked like a large train station. Rule #10, after Rome nothing seems really old, even 900 year old buildings in Budapest.

The market building was clean and charming with tile floors and hundreds of stalls selling wonderful fruits and vegetables on one side. In the rest of the market, there were stalls selling nothing but paprika, the national export, in a variety of different forms from powders to pastes. There were also stalls selling nothing but salamis and goose liver in different varieties. It was crowded with locals and tourists but very orderly and quite an experience.

We walked back the 2 miles along the waterfront and stopped to have a picnic lunch in a riverfront park. We had fresh baked rolls from the market along with the local cheese and salami left from our picnic the day before. We savored this lunch and had some humorous experiences while eating. We watched a man nearby doing a crossword puzzle in Hungarian and chuckled at the thought of what it would be like to have to spell this words in this difficult language filled with way too many letter “z’s.  As we ate our traditional Hungarian sandwiches on rye bread we noticed two young local men walking by eating their lunch, Big Macs. This is what we called a real cultural experience. We then caught the bus back to the Buda side and up to the castle hill to our hotel.

This afternoon we boarded our riverboat, suitable aptly named PrimaDonna,  for our cruise down the Danube.  We were at first shocked at the small size and location of our cabin, which was at water level and with a sofa bed and twin cot.  We are not used to sleeping apart and tried to express our disappointment to the hotel staff, but to no avail.  This was quite different than the large cruise ships we are used to, but we decided to make toe best of the situation.

Dinner was excellent.  Our evening’s entertainment, a group of Hungarian musical comedians, was excellent, and our attitudes began to improve as the evening progressed.

Down the river tonight!