Last chance for langos...

This morning we drove over to Agi's mother's house again so we could return both our and Agi's rental cars at the airport before we left on a train for Prague. Agi suggested we stop at her mother's cafe for coffee and breakfast, a cute little neighborhood cafe that looked more like a house than a cafe. Agi had animated conversations with some of the customers, who had known her since she was a little girl. Agi's mom served us some eggs an Hungarian style bacon, which is literally a quarter inch thick slice of pure fat, not a hint of actual meat in sight. Agi informed us that is how everybody likes it in Hungary. If this had been served to me in a restaurant, I wouldn't have touched it, but since it was served by Agi's mother I felt it would be rude not to eat it. I disguised the texture by taking tiny little pieces and wrapping it with a large bite of bread. :)

After breakfast, we dropped off Agi's rental car but couldn't return ours; we discovered that someone had taken the car emergency kit up to the hotel room instead of leaving it in the car... (and we were 45 minutes away from the hotel) We decided to keep the car for the day and have Shaun return it for us later.

Next, we had to go to Agi's sister's house to pick up another car, and Agi decided to have a coffee there, too. Perhaps in Hungary one never just stops over to run an errand, one always has to have coffee upon arriving at someone's house. Either that, or Agi just loves coffee. :) Helga gave me a couple beautiful necklaces, one for me and one for Olive, that she had made out of glass. (Mine has royal blue in it! My favorite color!)

Once we had the two cars (enough to carry all eight of us), we went back to the hotel to pick up the rest of the family. We followed Agi up Gellert Hill, so named for a monk who was rolled down it in a barrel wiht nails driven through it. (Rick Steves described it as "tenderized to death." Lovely.) Up at the top were, of course, beautiful views of the city and the Danube, as well as a lot of little souvenier carts. Olive and I both bought cute sun hats. :)

All of us in front of the Liberation Monument, or as the local call it, "The Great Bottle Opener." :)

The view of Budapest from Gellert Hill.

Olive and I in our cute new sun hats. :)

After that, we went back to Great Market Hall for lunch, as I wanted to have lángos one last time before leaving Budapest. I had a regular pizza one and bought a sweet one with nutella for everyone to share, though I think I actually prefer the "savory" lángos to the sweet.

Next, Agi took us to another (much better) part of Vaci Utca. We had thought we had seen the whole street, but we missed the main part of it with lotes of restaurants, shopping and ice cream. We didn't have too much time, so we grabbed some ice cream and then headed for the train station.

To save a bit of money and time, we had decided to take an overnight train to Prague. We planned to buy the sleeping cars, which were small bedrooms, but those were unfortunately full... Instead, we had to do a "couchette," which is a small room the size of a cubicle with SIX bunk beds. We had to fit the six of us and all of our luggage in this tiny space! Thus packed in like little sardines, the clickety clack of the wheels on the tracks lulled us to sleep.

I play an elaborate game of Tetris to fit in all of us and our luggage. The bottom seat is bunk 1, bunk 2 unfolds at about waist height, and top bunk is where those metal shelves are over my head. There was no room for the ladder, so Gavin and I had to perform various gymnastics maneuvers to get into our bunks. :)