kathryn|kurioso

It is so much fun yet weird at the same time to say, “Szia” (See Ya!) for hello. This is the first Hungarian word we learned from our Budapest friend – Jay. Today is our second day in Budapest. Our first day was basically traveling in almost all forms of transportations. We flew from London to Vienna, then took a train to Budapest. After meeting up with Jay at the train station, he took us back to his place by Metro and tram, then we trained back to the city at his hangout place – a hostel where we met many of Jay’s friends who are from many different countries and his girlfriend, Andi. After we spent some time at the hostel, we took a bus to Jay’s & Andi’s favourite Restaurant to show us some local Hungarian food. The food was great and very plentiful. My favorite Hungarian food dish so far is a soup - Goulas Leves. At the end, Jay drove us back to his home to end our first day.

Kevin and I were so impressed that in one short afternoon / evening. We pretty much experienced all Hungarian transportation methods.

Our Day 2 was more relaxing. We decided to sleep in, since we had a pretty exhaustive week, especially for Kevin trying to finish up his school work. Plus, he didn’t sleep on the night before flying out.

After we recharged with a good night’s sleep, we started our day with a very fine home cooked meal by Andi’s mom, Gabi, who is a excellent cook and hostess. She is just a very sweet lady. Kevin and I took the train to the city and wandered around the Pest area. We saw the following buildings:

Vigado Concert Hall:
It is very sad to see a historical building half taken over by a belly dancer club with big colourful cheesy signs.

St. Stephen’s Basilica:
The largest church in Budapest. We first saw the famous mummified right hand (almost 1000 years old!) of St. Stephen, and then we went up to the Panoramic Tower to have a nice 360o overview of the city.

Danube River side – to admire the castle on the Buda side.

Parliament Building:
Beautiful building with a red purple roof, which matched the flower’s colour of cherry blossom trees (my guess of the tree?!?). Just pretty!

Pizza Express for a break:
We found the waitress was kind of hot – “sexy librarian” look. I thought that Kevin would hit on her, but Kevin said she could be a bitch behind sweet smile. The truth came when we asked for the bill. She rolled her eyes when she left our table to get us the bill. We thought she was not very pleased that we had only ordered two coffees (not the cheap regular coffee!!) and a Bruschetta. On top of our bill / receipt, she wrote on a little paper adding her 15% service charge on top of our bill. She helped us to figure the final amount that we should leave. Man, she was so helpful, I guess she really deserved her 15% tips. Kevin was really nice to follow her instruction and left the exact amount as her requested. See, Kevin likes her!

Margaret Island:
An island and a park that is in the middle of the Danube River. We rented a bike to see the entire park. The park has many facilities, and many interesting areas to visit. We took exactly an hour to see the park. It was lots of fun!!!

Former Royal Postal Office, Magyar TV and National Bank:
It was getting pretty dark to see the fine details of these building. The National Bank building is very modern. We wished that we could have gone in to admire its glass roof / atrium.

Danube Rive side – to take some night shots of the castle across the river.

Astoria Hotel for dinner:
It is a pretty expensive restaurant in local standard. Kevin had stuffed pancake with paprika sauce to start and deer steak as the main course and I had goulas leves to start and young goose meat as the main. The stuffed pancake with paprika sauce was the winner. We were both very impressed by its taste and presentation. Excellent!

After the meal, we took the Metro and walked back to the hostel to meet up with Jay and Andi and went home together.

(Almost Live reports from Budapest sponsored by Jay Allen internet serviceTM)