4 nights in Budapest

the Parliament at night

When I finally wake up after our late late night arrival, it’s 79 degrees in Budapest today. Yes! Finally a sub 90 degree day.
Budapest is a great city and I had a blast. Nothing super exciting happened so I’ll mostly just show you pictures and videos. I ate a bunch of great Hungarian food: Langos which are homemade bread with butter which is deep fried then usually topped with sour cream and cheese, Goulash here is served as a hearty soup with bread on the side, yum! The restaurant recommended to me by Cosmo’s new friends in Amsterdam had a highly reviewed duck, which was delicious!

I played a little poker at the Mirage Poker Club. It was 100-200 no limit with a 20,000 buy-in but the money is in HUF and since 100 HUF is about 32 cents it was no problem! They had the World Cup games playing on two giant screens in Liberty Square with food and drink vendors, picnic tables, and more seating on the lawn.. I brought my goulash soup to the Canada playoff game and managed to find some grass seating. Unfortunately the game did not go well for Canada.

buttery yummy langos

Best place for langos

wonderful duck at Retek Bistro.
the creamed purple cabbage was so
good I could happily drown in a vat of it!

the Kimpton spread was not as
good as Hilton, but the fresh
squeezed OJ literally had me
sighing with satisfaction. Delicious!

Mirage Poker Club

My poker seat

my seat on the grass for the game

the scene at the World Cup viewing at Liberty Square

US Embassy table at the
riverfront celebration

From Liberty Square I decided to hike to the top of the Citadel for a night view of the city. It was 2 miles there and about 2.5 more to my hotel plus an altitude gain of 380 feet. Ouch! Especially since I had already done 4 miles of walking already that day. It was also the 46h of July and they had the main bridge all lit up in red, white, and blue. There were music groups and pop-up food and drink places all along the riverfront. I even found a table by the US Embassy giving out prizes for people taking a quiz about America. They reminded me it’s the 250th ! I can’t believe it’s been 50 years since I churned butter at a Santa Clara County Fair display as an 8 year old Campfire Girl. The trip up was painful but gratifying. Surprisingly several people were making the trek at 10pm on a Saturday night. I tried a way down with less stairs but it took me far away from the other people, which made me nervous so I circled back but not before I ran into not one, but two hedgehogs! Each trundled along mostly oblivious to me.

The other nifty thing was the train ride to Salzburg. First off, I almost flipped out when the couple waiting on the platform said they were going to Vienna. Vienna is cursed! They misunderstood my misgivings thinking I had the wrong train, but I told them of my 6 hour delay with the unusual lightning strike. Luckily it is only an issue traveling to/from Vienna for ME not for others as we had no problems. I also sat across from a wonderful lady who I thought was German since she spoke German. Turns out she is Hungarian but is fluent in German. We had a great conversation about her life and family, my life and Cosmo, and things to do in Salzburg where she has family. She was very patient with my broken German and it felt great to finally live up to my HS German teacher's goal that if we were dropped in Germany we could get by.

Bridge lit up in Red White and Blue
for the 250th 4th of July

The Citadel in the distance, my goal

their electric trams that get you around town

some unknown sculptor leaves these
tiny meaningful sculptures randomly
around Budapest every month or so

me and Cosmo strolling through town

My friend on the train,
Andrea from Hungary

View of Budapest at night from the citadel