Saturday, June 20, 2015 Budapest

I woke up at 4:30 and finally got up at 6:30 to do some more pictures. Celeste woke up soon after. We went for a great buffet breakfast in a fancy breakfast hall at 8 and went back out touring at 10.

We went back to the market mall to look for something for the girls, but in the end we decided that the traditional items there were too expensive for items that would rarely be worn and went for a couple of Minnie Mouse shirts instead. I am sure they will be a bigger hit than what we were originally looking for.

We returned to the hotel around 1 to catch our wind and to drop off my jacket as the day was becoming fairly warm. Then we headed off on our second adventure – exploring in the general direction of the opera house, where we plan to tour at 3. We found one of many bike drop-off depots, a cute washroom sign, and a guy getting his picture taken with a statue of a fat guy.

We wandered around the pedestrian area looking for a place to eat. We finally settled on the same place we ate yesterday, but we ordered different things. I had a delicious Goulash soup while Celeste had the sausage soup that I had yesterday. 

Then we raced over to the opera house and just managed to catch the English tour. What a zoo in that place! Our group was very large, so they split us up into three smaller groups. In addition, there was a French tour and more than one cruise ship tour in the building. As we raced from place to place, hotly pursued by the next group, we continuously crossed paths with other groups following different paths. I don’t know how they made it work. It seemed like chaos, but I guess it is a pattern that they have worked out over the years. At about $15 CAD per person, I am sure they bring in a lot more from tours than they ever do from opera. At the end of the day, it is a pretty impressive building with a very interesting story.

After the tour, we went back to the hotel by a different route, stopping in tranquil Franz Liszt park,

and then checking out a street that is promoting a new bar and restaurant and coffee house scene. We stopped at the hotel about 4:30 for a bathroom break and a breather, and then headed out again, wandering around the neighbourhood from 5:30 to 6:30. We did not want to waste any of that last precious time here. Here is part of a park across from our hotel. The Plexiglas bottom of this pool is actually the ceiling of a subterranean nightclub. It is pretty cool looking up from below.

We started getting ready for an early bedtime as we will be up about 2:30 AM to begin the process of getting home. If everything is on time, we will spend 19.5 hours from first take-off to final landing, plus ground travel at either end. Our transfer to the airport leaves three hours before flight time and we are getting up an hour before that. It will be a long day!

I am glad we spent this extra time here. I have passed through here a few times, but never but only made a couple of overnight stays and a couple of daytime stays of an hour or two. It was interesting to get to poke around a little bit.