Budapest Day 3

Our third day in Budapest was reserved for Memento (Szobor) Park. I'm not going to any Communist country any time soon, so where else will I see relics of the Red Army? Also, think of the tourist photos opportunities!!!

Put simply, the park is not conveniently located. Well there is a direct bus but we were errrr too lazy to get up for an 11am bus. Anyway exploring a city by using it's public transport is the way to go *thumbs up*. To get there ourselves, we needed to a catch a metro to a tram stop (ok we could have walked but it would have taken 40 minutes), catch a tram from near the Market Hall to Kosztolanyi Dezso ter and then catch bus no. 150... which would take 30 minutes before it reached the park.

Again, all we had to do was put on puzzled looks while staring at the tram map before we were approached by a lovely Hungarian woman who asked if we needed help. Lucky for us she was getting off where we needed to catch the bus and helped us find our merry way. She also mentioned she used to live in the UK and couldn't stand the weather.



The bus ride was pleasant and took us through suburbia. It was evident that about 80% of the passengers were heading to the park. When the bus finally got to our destination, there was generally let-down feeling of 'Oh.... is that all there is???' It felt very Commie out where we were - ok, ok, fine, fine in all respect we were in an industrial area. The barren landscape didn't help.







From the pamphlets and website I got the impression the park was huge... but it's not. I thought the collection of statues was greater... but it's not. It is what it is...... a shitty piece of Hungarian history. It's a nice idea that they kept some statues though. You know, you do need to teach the youngins about the past.




You can say I was a bit crestfallen about Memento Park. I had wanted it to be a 'pretty park with statues' with some commercial drive - oh the irony! But the more I think about it, the more I realise what the Hungarians did for these statues is appropriate. Once the Commie regime fell they really didn't have to keep these sculptures, however banishing them to a bit of outer suburbian wasteland is a fitting idea.

Smee doing his best attempt to be a statue.

A monument ... or something...

The Commie star.

Statues....

...more statues...

... more statues still! Me with Stalin's boots.

Some of the paraphenalia on offer.

A commie car.

The exhibition hall..... ..... mmmm.....right....

I make no pretence that I'm heavy on the political knowledge, but I do like seeing the not-so mainstream stuff. However, I would definitely say for most tourists - don't make a specific trip out to Memento Park. I guarantee you disappointment. But for anyone who has any sort of political interest (no, I'm not encouraging the gathering of Commie extremists) you might want to have a look.

On the tram on our return journey, we ran into a Jazz/Wine festival - noice! Very relaxed atmosphere.

Happy with the previous night's dinner at Kiskakukk, we decided to try another Hungarian restaurant, Oreghalasz Etterem. It was a little out of the way for us but if it's got good food, then it's worth it.

The restaurant was a low key, family style setting. Dishes on offer were humble, non-fussy fare. Definitely not as nice as Kiskakukk. Probably not even nice enough for a return trip. Oh well.

Our dinner choices - fish soup, potatoes with meat (I forget) and a schnitzel again. Hmm yeah it was pretty ordinary. Tomorrow, our final day in Budapest!

Budapest Day 2

After seeing much of the Pest side of Budapest yesterday, today we decided to explore the Buda side. This side of the city is more hilly and is the site of Buda Castle, some other old buildings and other old... stuffs.

First stop was the Gellert Baths and again cos we didn't our bathing suits = no thermal bath for us.

Opposite the baths was a church carved into a cave. Cool!

From there we made our way to the rear of the castle.

Oh here we go...now it looks more castle-y.

Hmmm, that's an interesting way to take a photo and shield oneself from the glare.

The view from the castle of Pest. Aaah so pwetty.

After meandering through the castle grounds we reached the centre of the Old Town and found a supermarket. We needed water!

Fisherman's Bastion was next on the conquer list. I do like turrets and the fairytale feelings they conjure up.

Cant...

stop....


taking...

photos!

We then walked through the rest of the surround old town.

We found the closest Metro at the base of the hill and went back to the Pest side. A bunch of food stalls popped up in the middle of nowhere! Me so happy to find quaint wooden food stalls.

An interesting menu choice there.

Here's a man cooking traditional Hungarian chimney cake. Mmmm looks and smelled so tasty.

Pickled vegetable faces.

An extensive collection of fur hats for sale. Mmmm... langos....

Buborekos tea has come to Hungary!

We rested up back at our hotel and had a dip in the pool (hehe) before heading out to dinner at Kiskakukk, a charming, unfussy Hungarian restaurant. When asked what Kiskakukk meant, the waiter said 'koo koo'. Aaah, the cuckoo bird. Hungarians are so cute!

I kinda expected Hungarian cuisine to be similar to Austrian, which is similar to German - heavy on the sausages. Rather, it is more gamey and I was surprised to find out that as the second largest producer of foie gras, they eat bucketloads of it. Bring... it.... ON!!! Also, real Hungarian goulash served in Hungary tends to be more watery than the thick, stewy counterparts served elsewhere in the world (so the guidebooks tell me).

Our mushroom soup and goulash.

Grilled goose liver (yum!) with apple rounds in Tokaji sauce. Yum! The dish of the night for me.

Smee really felt like having a schnitzel.

I had the veal stew with spatzle. Yum!

Not that I really know what Hungarian cuisine should taste like but all the reviews are pretty positive. I definitely would come back to this restaurant and recommend those who visit Budapest, have a dinner at Kiskakukk too :)

Budapest Day 1

For the Easter break, Smee and I decided to have a Hungarian time in Budapest or Buda-pesht as the locals say. We jetted in late last night and in the midst of the confusion between the two terminals, we couldn't locate the train that would take us to the city centre. It's only in hindsight that the outdoor, not very well sign-posted train station was where we should have been. By now, it appeared that we missed the last train and so we hopped on the bus which would bring us to a Budapest-ian metro station.

We reached Kobanya Kispest metro which was good as this station would connect us directly to the metro nearest to our hotel. It all looked a bit 'Eastern European' at night and we couldn't figure out how to buy tickets so we descended down the same stairs some people were coming from. We must've had super-confused faces on because a kid (ok he was probably 20 years old) asked if we needed some help. Hungarian folk are friendly folk! He told us that this was the last metro for the night and that the best way to get to our hotel would be taxi. In his cute, broken English he instructed where to get the cab and as we parted ways he waved and 'hoped that we have a sunny day tomorrow!' Awww.... how nice.

The cabbie seemed dodgy (but he wasn't, he just had dodgy driving) but we made to the hotel unscathed. I saw the sign Adina and thought, 'Hang on, have they ripped off the Medina in Oz?'. Then we found out that it was the same hotel group. Well, actually it was a serviced apartment and it felt very homely indeed. Serviced apartments are my preferred choice of accommodation. You can cook if you want to! You can wash clothes if you want to!

Our Helpful Hungarian's wishes for us came true and we did indeed wake up to a sunny day today. My, my it was good to have 20+ degree weather and not the horrible Easter weather in London. Our first pit stop was Nagy Varsarcsarnok aka The Great Market Hall.

This is where the locals go to stock up on paprika, sausages and market-y stuff. I read somewhere that Gustave Eiffel had some input into the building design but I suspect that's a lie.

Inside the hall.

The ground floor of the market was largely fresh produce and delicatessen goods. A small butcher section was in basement, while the first floor had handicrafts and a small food court.

Eating a langos on the top level. I haven't had one since Berlin! Sour cream, cheese and onions go quite well on a langos. Yummy.

After eating, we made our way down one of the main pedestrian streets, Vaci Utca. It was nearby that we boarded a Metro Line 1 train which runs under the Andrassy Avenue (Budapest's answer to the Champs Elysees) and gets you to the Szechenyi Baths. We got off a stop earlier to have a look at the majestic Heroes Square. That particular Metro Line was very turn of the century with it's tiled walls and smaller trains. The tune - yes an actual tune - signifying the stop made it feel even more 1800s. At first I thought something was wrong with the train but then I saw that no one else was perturbed so I happily sat and hummed the tune each time the train paused.

Oh, what a nice day it was :D. Smee posing with the statues. Nothing beats the awesome weather.

We considered going to the spa baths but with no bathing suits, that was a no-go. The surrounding park was very pretty and I can see how fun it would get when seasonal activities are set up. The park is also the location of the Vajdahunyad Castle, which was initially built for a funfair or something like that, but the locals wanted to keep it.

We had a bit of gander around the grounds and then made our way back down Andrassy Avenue towards the Danube.

Smee snapping a photo of St Stephen's Basilica.

Two happy horses.

We walked over the Szechenyi Chain Bridge.

Posing with Buda Castle. Not very castle-y from this view.

Posing with the Hungarian Parliament, THE landmark of Budapest.

So far, so good. Budapest is such a lovely city which is easy to traverse on foot, stop and look at pretty buildings and hang with the Hungarians.

Ch-ch-ch-changes...

I've been pretty sick of my Blogger Rounders 4 template for a while. It was probably my best choice of the so-so designs on offer back in 2006. The thing is, Blogger hasn't moved with the times and the basic templates available now are no different to that in 2006. Most people now have widescreen monitors and even on my laptop, I felt that the post section was just too narrow and there was a lot of wasted space.

Rather than sit around waiting for Blogger to upload more templates, I just went for a search and found a few to my liking. This site is a good place to start and I eventually stumbled on to YummyLolly where I found the template I liked most. I do say 'I liked most' because there are still things I'm not quite satisfied with.

After becoming a *cough* mini html expert *cough*, I managed to modify my template so it was a bit more to my liking. Still not quite happy with it (what's the html code for a vertical dotted line!?!?!) but I'm liking it much more than the previous incarnation :D

My new default font is Trebuchet so the old blogs will still have Arial. As if I could be bothered going back over my 300+ posts to make it consistent with the new font. So yeah, I'm liking the new template but not loving it - if I find something else that tickles my fancy, I'll change it again!

Batter Up!

As part of my state primary school curriculum, it was compulsory for us tykes to compete in Summer and Winter sports against other local schools. I was far from an asset to the team and our school was generally quite shit at sport so I didn't feel too bad as we probably lost more games than won. Whilst the opposing school usually were meticulous in their matching uniforms, we were the side full of misfits with a half-baked semblance of a team. I recall my best friend at the time being jibed by the other team for wearing a Kylie Minogue t-shirt. This of course when Kylie sported a daggy, fluffy perm and before her rebirth as the Princess of Pop.

Netball was my Winter sport. The other options were AFL or Soccer and as if I was going to play either of those. In Summer, I had the choice of Cricket (ppfffffftttt), Rounders or Softball.

I don't know how I ended up in the Softball team but I think it was partly because the Rounders team actually had a bit of talent and it was popular with other female students. All the boys wanted to play Cricket of course. So where do the all the kids who are don't like/aren't good at sport go? They were sometimes the socially awkward ones too. They go to the Softball team!

That's not to say I wasn't actually good at Softball. I wasn't great but I could hit the ball and make it to the first base sometimes. Every now and then I would make it all the way back to the home plate. Yay! Still, I wasn't about to win MVP or anything like that.

So, when Smee suggested going to the only baseball batting cage in London I got really excited :D Was I really any good at softball? Or was it all in my head? There was only one way to find out.

Smee in his gear.... or doing his best Marvin the Martian impersonation.

Me gearing up for my turn *stupid grin*

I made contact with the ball!!! Nothing but bat.... ooooh yeah...

... and off the ball goes into the net.... ooooh yeah...

Smee and his swing.

I initially was using a baseball bat and it was surprisingly heavy and hurt my wrist each time I made a swing. I didn't realise it was a baseball bat until the cages' maintenance guy handed us a softball bat after seeing me in the softball cage. Oh, that was much better, much lighter.

I only batted in the softball (not baseball) cages and only in the slow - medium cage. Strike rate was about 75% - yay! Smee starting getting a bit scared cos I was whacking the ball with extreme enthusiasm.

After a while my forearms really started to hurt but I was addicted and kept wanting to bat more and more! I could have happily continued but it started getting darker and forearms were hurting too much. In fact as I type this, they're quite sore and I had difficulty unbuttoning my jeans. You don't realise how often you use your forearms until they are suffering from muscular pain!

Anyway if it weren't for the park being so far, I would go to the cages regularly. So so fun!