Invasion of No. 3 Duncan Street

The inhumanity!  They've sent an advanced party and they are rock huggers!!

Stones of Stenness - Orkneys

Hungarian Clapping

After the ballet performance, a curious thing occurred. After a few seconds of random clapping, the entire audience started a steady, synchronised rhythm.

This went on and on as a series of more and more complex bows took place. There was no ovation, but a louder quicker clapping for very good performances and a slower, but still polite clapping for smaller parts.

After the ballet, we googled it and found some other guy's blog who was also a bit taken aback by it.  You see it was a little creepy - 1000 people clapping in time.  

So the next night, we were ready.  After Madam Butterfly, I taped about 2.5 minutes of the 4 minute appreciation. 

Thankfully, I collected in small increments.  I had to stop occasionally due to my giggling from Gill's continued attempts to convince everyone that random clapping was better.  She did this by intentionally clapping out of time, loud clapping, fast clapping, and a series of hoots, giggles and sighs. 

Alas, the other 998 guests refused to try it her way.

This is it; the final Hungarian Post.

Hungarian Swimming

Budapest is right on top of some geothermal hot springs and there have been people here 'taking the water' since Roman times.  There are several bath houses in both Buda and Pest that have been around for a really long time.


Gill and I needing some rejuventation decided we would take a low impact approach to Budapest sightseeing and spent an afternoon and an entire day at two of the most popular bath houses.


The first we went to was in Buda and is called Gellert and is inside an old ornate hotel. The Gellert spa has been open since 1918 and it had pools inside and out.  We tried them both, and it was a bit like sitting in a green bath tub with several dozen strangers.


The next day we went to Szechenyi, which is in Pest.  These baths have been open since 1909.  

Modern Renaissance style with qualified medicinal waters containing calcium, magnesium-hydrogen-carbonates, chloride, sulphates, alcalia, and a significant amount of fluoride

They have a very organized, if a bit confusing system.  You pay for entry, a locker or cabin, and any extras and then you are given this little plastic watch like thing.  If you asked for a changing cabin, you put your little watch up to this panel and it assigns you a cabin and then the watch opens it as well.

Those red jeans are awesome!

Once you have changed, you can go rent a 'towel,' which is actually a big sheet and then you are off to the pools.  The pools are all split up by temperature and what you can do in there 'sit,' swim, 'sit.'  If you want to swim, you have to wear a cap.  Any kind of cap will do, but we did enjoy the constant whistle as people just flat refused to understand this really clear sign.

We had to go down two floor and through several dodgy hallways to find the showers and then we wore our 'towels' back to our huts.  We were rewarded with a very big smile and greeting from our male Hungarian hall monitor.


After spending a day in the 80 degree Hungarian sun, we hustled off to the airport and arrived to near freezing temperatures in Manchester.  


Ah, the pleasures of returning from holiday.

Going to the OPERA

Gill and I went to the ballet, Taming of the Shrew, and the opera, Madame Butterfly at the amazing and gorgeous state opera house.  The building is incredible and a tourist attraction in it's own right with pillars, and 1000s of gallons of gilt applied.

'Birthday' Girls on the way to the ballet

The ballet was the first night, and it was excellent.  Great story, great performances, incredible costumes and a beautiful set.  The stage is very narrow, but they managed to fill every inch with something and the cast was huge. 

We'd purchased the ballet tickets ahead of time, but the website said Madame Butterfly was sold out.  Madame Butterfly is on Gill's bucket list so we stopped by on a walk by the opera and asked after tickets.  


The lady said no, there are no tickets, clickety clackety on the keyboard.  Gill said, really, are you sure...yes, yes there are tickets and then she proceeded to give us a selection to choose from.

We picked a center balcony on the second level.  Since we'd had seats on the floor level for the ballet, it was a great way to appreciate the fact that this old building really does have fantastic acoustics - and the view and performance were about as good as it gets.

View from our balcony at Madame Butterfly

At both performances, we noticed the unusual way the Hungarians expressed their appreciation for a performance, but that is a subject for another post...

Ooh Aah!

To Market We Go

We read in our book that there was this Great Market Hall with food stalls on the ground floor and traditional crafts on the first floor and a fish market in the basement.  I had originally suggested that we plan to go the last day so we could collect any souvenirs that we hadn't managed to get the previous days.  


Gill didn't say anything but she had this really worried look on her face.  So after breakfast at the New York Cafe, we did an orienteering circle around Pest and ended up at the Market mid-afternoon.  We walked by their parliament and had this sort of notion that we could take a relaxing stroll along the Danube.  


We did walk along the Danube, but it is right next to the busiest street, and it is frequented by Budapest's homeless - or at least the people that seem to need a nap in their clothes on the sidewalk in the afternoon.

Exterior of the great market hall

The exterior of the market was so beautiful with really intricate tile for the roof that we would also see the next day on several of the buildings in Buda.  The inside was pretty darn beautiful as well with all of the windows and iron work.

Looking down at the food stalls from the beer garden

We toured around the top and received a bit of high pressure salesmanship, but it was tolerable and by no means as bad as it was in Morocco.  We stopped to have a beer and consider our purchases before we went back and Gill bought a wooden chess set and I bought some ridiculous wooden hanging things: one is definitely a chef and another is perhaps a horse or maybe a hippo or perhaps a dinosaur.


We toured around the ground floor and checked out all of the  produce and meats for sale.  Everyone there was clearly collecting supplies for dinner and you could tell by the conversations going on that many people go to the same stalls over and over.  

Hungarian Men Chewing the Fat
Factoid: the average Hungarian eats 1 pound of lard a week

Apparently, the stalls themselves are handed down from generation to generation - you can't just rent one willy nilly.

MEAT!

We purchased our afternoon snack at a pastry stall.  I got the world largest cream puff and Gill got a little custard square.  I insisted on eating them immediately and continued a long whine until I was given mine.  I was COVERED in cream within seconds and received some pretty horrified stares from passersby.  I suspect eating on the produce floor is perhaps bad form.

VEGETABLES!

We then did a bit of comparison shopping for paprika, which comes in many forms in Budapest.  There is sweet and hot powder - a paste in a squeezy tube that is used for goulash again in sweet and hot form and then there is a jar with a sauce.  The male sauce is hot and the female sauce is sweet - imagine!  We purchased from the stall that gave us the least problems.

Fantastic!

We walked back to our hotel with all of our purchases, which seemed like a bit longer walk than it was on the way over.  I did get very close to begging for a taxi, but then we saw our little man, and I knew we only had a block to go.


We had just enough time to clean up and have a drink before the ballet.

Me and Ronnie

This rather recent bronze is to honor RR for his work at ending communism in Hungary.  One of the most moving things I saw was a Hungarian flag outside of their parliament building where they had ripped out the the communist code of arms from the center of the flag rather than have a communist symbol on it during an uprising in 1956.  There was a little platform in front of the flag where people brought and left trinkets and remembrance.  

Parliament's in the background

Budapest (aka: Buda Peshhhht)

Gill and I went to Budapest for our Birthdays.  We selected a day exactly in between our birthdays, and she set the trip up.  I'd suggested Istanbul, but received a text from her suggesting Budapest, and we had what we thought was a very good deal, including airfare and 3 nights at a 5 star hotel.  

Now everyone that heard of this deal scoffed and said...5 stars!  Well, it was pretty fantastic by all standards when we arrived on Wednesday night.

Fancy fancy room before our stuff exploded all over it

Budapest is sort of a big city and since we really didn't know anything about it, it was a little overwhelming.  But then Gill noticed this bronze dude hanging out, and he became our landmark for all trips out.

We ate in the hotel (tapas) and had a good nights sleep.  When we got up in the morning, we ventured out to the New York Cafe.  We had sort of a hard time finding it, but Gill used her iphone and the tripadvisor feature, and we were soon there. 

The New York Cafe has had many lives.  It is currently in a hotel and owes it's complete restoration to the Italians.  It was originally built by the New York Insurance Company as part of the New York Palace in 1894.  During the 1930s, it became the most beautiful warehouse in the world.  We had eggs and lovely coffee, and it was so fantastic (the food, the service, and the atmosphere) that we came back 2 days later, even though it was really out of the way.

'The most beautiful cafe in the world' the swirly pillars are carved gorgeous blonde wood

Budapest is two cities divided by the Danube.  I thought the architecture is fairly spectacular and not at all what I expected for a former communist country, where many I have seen have lost their personality for uniformity.  Pest is pretty much flat and Buda is really hilly.  Pest is a bit more modern; Buda's streets are crooked little paths dictated by this big hill.

Overlooking Pest from Buda at the Parliament Building

The funicular is the best way to get up the hill on Buda, to most of the big sights.  There are three little terraced cabins in each car that goes up and down the hill.   The views were spectacular, and it saved the legs.

Buda's funicular

We didn't really go into any of the 'sights'  We had brunch in Buda and the most amazing fresh squeezed apple, mint lemonade, and then tried to find the underground hospital, but when we didn't find it after much backtracking, we decided to go to the baths instead.  The weather was glorious the 3 days we were there.

Overlooking Buda from Pest

Budapest is the best value for money I've ever seen in Europe.  You could easily spend a week or two and not see everything.  The food is lovely and everything is very very reasonable.  It has clearly been hard hit by the world's economic issues.  Most people speak some English, and they work hard to try and communicate with you.  

They are doing everything they can to make tourism work.

My advice: get there...go, go, go