Today was a day for a lot of sleeping in and running errands, and not so much sight seeing. I was up at 8am, so did some working out (I bring resistance bands on vacations "just in case" I have time to work out), but I had to get Gavin out of bed at 10:30am since he was still sleeping and everybody else was ready to go. :) We had lunch at a little outdoor cafe a block away from our hotel, then headed across to Pest (pronounced "Pesht") to run our errands.
I didn't know that Budapest is actually sort of two cities: Buda on the east side and Pest on the west side of the Danube river. They are connected by several bridges, one of which is the Chain Bridge, the first bridge to connect Buda and Pest. Our hotel is pretty close to it, making crossing over into Pest an easy, but long walk. We walked over to buy our overnight train tickets to Prague and get groceries, then walked back over. Later, we crossed by car to take Gavin and his brothers for tux fittings. Olive and I dropped off the guys and then tried to find parking... but Gavin took our map with him, leaving us to navigate on instinct and sense of direction alone, which are VERY poor in my case... :D After driving around a bit trying to find free parking, failing, then struggling with how to work the Hungarian-directions-only parking machines, we finally got the car parked. We walked to the tuxedo rental place, which actually seemed to be a costume shop, complete with fake muscular chest plates, "sexy pirate" costumes and glitter-covered penis headbands... But the suit coats looked nice. :)
After errands we went back to the hotel, where everybody but me promptly fell asleep, so I used the time to read about things to do in Budapest and pick a place for dinner. We went to eat at a restaurant only a block away from our hotel. It was a Hungarian resturant recommended by Rick Steve's, one of the few on the Buda side that he recommended. The menu was meat, meat and more meat. I ordered a lighter-looking shrimp dish, and wasn't disappointed. But I also mooched something off of almost everybody else's plate just to taste, including a complete stranger sitting at the table beside us! :) (he was by himself, and offered us some Hungarian "Fried Dough," since he couldn't finish all of it) Olive ordered veal, so I tasted veal for the first time. Pretty good, though it was hard to taste the meat itself through all the sauce and spices. Tyler had a side dish called "steak potatoes" that tasted like someone had taken a steak and wrung it like a sponge over the potatoes - YUM!
After dinner we took a night cruise up and down the Danube. The boat had two levels: the lower level was glassed in and the upper level was open air. Everybody on the boat went right up to the top level, where we put on our headphones and got to listen to a cheesy pre-recorded tour about the buildings we were passing and their background; the recording included a lot of fake "first person" characters, like The Danube, King Mattias, etc. (i.e. "I am the Danube. I was jealous of the views from Castle Hill, so I tried to overflow my banks..." or "King Mattias" who spoke perfect English with an American accent...) But cheesy soundtrack aside, the city on both sides of the Danube is beautiful at night...
The Buda castle at night.
The Elisabeth bridge.
The Hungarian parliament building on Pest side.
About halfway through the tour, it suddenly started to rain, sending all of us fleeing for the safety of the glass-domed lower level. By the time we got off the boat, it was pouring, cold and windy... and we had a half hour walk to get back to our hotel... There were taxis lined up at the boat dock that knew the end time of the tour, but given our various experiences with ripoff taxi drivers waiting for unsuspecting tourists and Rick Steve's recommendation to never take a taxi off the street, we decided to walk anyway, braving blustery winds and getting pelted by rain all the way across the chain bridge, climbing under barriers to cross the street instead of walking out of our way to the real crosswalks, and finally traipsing our drenched bodies across the lobby of our hotel, much to the displeasure of the front desk staff. :) From then, it was a hot shower and a good night's sleep.
Gavin and I, soaking wet, outside our hotel. :)
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