The Hungarian food pyramid

Today we tried getting around on Hungarian public transportation by ourselves (Helga had guided us yesterday). We took the nice outdoor tram across the Liberty bridge to the Great Market Hall, a gorgeous building filled with, what else, a market. :) The ground floor was all food, mostly a lovely produce market. We had a delicious pasty that was similar to an apple turnover and some fresh blueberries. We also sought out a spice stall where we could try out both sweet and spicy paprika. (in Hungary, there are almost a hundred varieties of paprika, not just the generic paprika we get in the US.) I enjoyed the spicy paprkia and thought it might be good on eggs, so I bought some. They also had some DIRT CHEAP saffron there, so I definitely couldn't resist buying a bag. (only $3 for a whole bag vs. $12 for a pinch of threads in the US! )

Great Market Hall.

The inside of Great Market Hall.

An "interesting" eggplant at one of the produce stands... :)

Olive and Ron admire a lovely spice stall.

Upstairs in Great Market Hall was a huge souvenier shop with different stalls, all seeming to sell the same few things: pashminas/shawls, traditional Hungarian garb, embroidered table runners and assorted kitsch. Olive bought me a cute little scarf that I was admiring. :) Then we finally arrived at the food stalls, and I got my first taste of lángos.

Hungarians seem to have a different food pyramid than we do. At the bottom of the pyramid, where our bread and cereals would be, is deep fried ANYTHING. They deep fry every kind of meat, every kind of vegetable, and lángos is no exception; it is fried dough, similar to our east coast fried dough that we can get at the Big E, or elephant ears. At the lángos stand I visited in Great Market Hall, they used their deep fried dough as a pizza crust, slathered it with sour cream, added an inch thick layer of mozzarella cheese and then put the toppings on top of that. Pizza on crack. :) As if we hadn't already consumed enough calories to power a team of Clysdales, Gavin and I then split a "squirrel" crepe filled nutella and nuts.

Lángos, one of the Hungarian food groups. :)

We also noticed that one could order a lángos with "Hungarian Special Sauce." We saw a bottle sitting behind the counter that had a yellow label taped over it that denoted it "Hungarian Special Sauce." However, the red bottle with the green top gave it away; their so-called "Hungarian Special Sauce" was obviously Sriracha. :)

After stuffing ourselves on the second floor, we nearly lost our lunches when heading down to the basement. The basement is the fish market, and it is a POTENT aroma down there. I can see why most fish markets are open air... They not only had dead fish, but there were also tanks with huge live fish crammed in with barely enough room to swim around. We didn't linger in this area, but farther along in the basement were stalls of pickled things: pickled peppers, pickled onions, pickled cabbage and more. Some of the glass jars of pickles had their contents cut and arranged artistically into flowers, smiley faces and butterflies that were visible on the outside of the glass. Cute!

A view of Great Market Hall from the second floor.

We left Great Market Hall and headed across the street to Váci Utca, a pedestrian-only street that is the main tourist shopping area in Budapest. We weren't all that impressed - just a bunch of kitschy shops and some restaurants. We walked to the end (well, what we thought was the end... we found out otherwise a few days later) and then went back to catch the tram to our hotel.

Me on Váci Utca.

As today was the day before Shaun and Agi's wedding, we all dressed up to take some wedding photos around the Buda Castle area. Poor Agi wasn't wearing her wedding dress: something earlier during the day she sneezed while wearing the dress and her zipper broke! (hello, bridal nightmare come true...) She wore a beautiful party dress instead.

Shaun, his brothers and Mike (their friend from Denmark), lookin' sharp!

After photos, we went back to the hotel for a couple drinks, and I watched while Agi's niece (also the wedding coordinator) attempted to teach the unenthusiastic groomsmen a dance for the wedding reception. :) After that we had another meal at Matróz Koscma, drove Shaun back to Agi's mom's house, then went to sleep.

Agi, a couple of her bridesmaids, Shaun and his brothers striking a pose at Buda Castle. (and the REAL photographer's head in front. :) )