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Budapest Day 1
We arrive from the train and exit the beautiful station into sunshine! Oh sweet day! The train station is ancient, and very bustling. We had a bit of a confusing time trying to find the metro ticket counter, finding they don't take Euro, exchanging Euro for HUF, then finding the right metro line. Whew. We made it to our hotel after that just fine. They had a bottle of Hungarian wine for us, we corked open that and perused the visitor guides while enjoying it!
Our hotel was just outside of the city center again so walking was planned, but since it is so sunny we don't mind. We walked down to the Danube, and were there early enough to hopefully buy a dinner cruise for Wednesday night. They didn't have any for this night, so we purchased for Thursday and received a recommendation for a nice Hungarian restaurant just up the street. Like Prague, Budapest has it's monuments lit up at night. The Chain Bridge looks almost Christmasy! We are on the Pest side of the river; the flat side. The Castle, the Gellert Monument and the Szabadság Szobor or Liberty Statue (erected in 1947 after the Soviet liberation from Nazi rule) are on the hilly Buda side.
We stroll along the Danube to our restaurant and are greeted warmly and very cordially. We ordered a bottle of Hungarian wine a red Cab Franc, very delish. The dinner was served in a very relaxed manner, and soon musicians set up and began playing. Everything on the menu was very reasonably priced. I enjoyed a Chicken Paprikish and Alex had a steak. We were basically ready to go, but the waiter insisted on us ordering dessert…we felt it was a little pushy, but hey, they had some fabulous looking pastry dishes. So we ordered the Gundel pancake, filled with fruits and then flambé! Soon dancers joined the band so we began to understand why dessert was so important for us! When we were given the check, we were asked to fill out a survey in exchange for which they would give us a glass of schnapps. This schnapps is nothing like the Peppermint stuff I used to mix with my hot chocolate after skiing in Colorado! Very strong spirit! So, remember when I said everything on the menu was reasonably priced? It apparently all added up very much and our dinner was over $100! Oh well, we're here and we enjoyed ourselves immensely.
We walked back to the hotel with a plan to purchase a hop on, hop off tour of the city tomorrow.
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