Budapest

Thursday Sept 29

Once again we woke early, as has been the norm lately. Actually its not really that early either but days full of exploring and travel certainly make one tired, and this late in the trip we were all on the point of exhaustion. The irony of it all is, in this case, we were in Budapest, and for only one day. And Budapest is one of those grand places in the world for amazing architecture and history and rich culture and great food. No matter how tired we were, it just seemed like a shame not to explore this beautiful city, so we did.

After a very satisfying buffet at the hotel we met up with a tour group to see the sights of Budapest. We took a tour by CityRama, a local company and our tour guide was a knowledgeable lady named Boré. She was a Hungarian native and lived her whole life in Budapest. She was probably around 60 in age and was dressed simple but proper and carried a large umbrella. She spoke with a definite accent and knew her history although she was was a bit too soft spoken for her position. She reminded me of Mary Poppins and indeed she looked as if she was showing up for an interview as a nanny.

We viewed many amazing buildings, statues and monuments but what held my attention the longest was the name of the city. Budapest is actually two names put together and the city is not one but two. Buda is the name of the city on one side of the Danube river and Pest is the name of the city on the other side of the Danube river. I was shocked that I never knew that before. I’m still not sure how it all works because every address I’ve seen uses the full name Budapest and I’ve always heard it referred to as the full name. It was one of those ah ha moments that was literally a shock, like if after my whole life someone were to try and convince me that gummy worms were actually made from real worms. At first I thought it was a joke and then I was almost ashamed that I somehow missed that fact in geography class.

While touring the government buildings on the Buda side, many of them were being refurbished. It seems Hungary is just one more country that was stuck in a constant loop of war and conquering resulting in continual construction, destruction and reconstruction. Boré at one point commented on a structure and made the comment that this section is not very old, it was recently rebuilt around the turn of the 20th century. I think that’s a trademark for Europe when a 120 year old building is considered new construction.

Walking through the streets we were amazed and perhaps a bit intimidated by the number of policeman on the streets. There were literally officers in pairs at almost every intersection and even more in between. Perhaps it was only down by the river and around the historical places and government buildings, but with all the reconstruction projects we figured that’s why they are all walking around on the streets, the building were all closed for renovation. LOL

Another thing that was interesting were the street lights were not on poles on the sides of the street, but there were hanging over the streets by wires attached to the buildings. We were not able to see them at night so don’t know if it was better for lighting or what the reason was, but it created a lot more wires criss crossing everywhere and made holes in some beautiful old building facades.

At the end of the bus portion of the tour we were dropped off at the Parliament building. One of, if not THE most recognizable building in the city (on the Pest side) the sprawling complex takes up several blocks along the Danube river and is a masterpiece in architecture both inside and out. We took a walking tour through the building and it was truly a marvel.

At the conclusion of the Parliament tour we hired another Bolt car and headed back to the airport for our return trip to Barcelona.

At the airport Mark was once again stopped at security. He has been every flight so far. Nothing serious though, they have to do a manual search, sometimes finding things he left in his pockets and sometimes just maybe because he looks like a bad guy, lol, who knows. But he is convinced it’s due to profiling.

Again we visited a lounge for some snacks and drinks and took to the skies. All of our flights have been great up to this point and actually this one was also, with the exception of about a 5 minute spot when we hit air turbulence. And boy did we hit it. The plane felt like it was going to shake completely apart. Everyone stopped what they were doing and starting grabbing on to their neighbors. As I looked around fear had completely gripped people and it showed on their faces. All except for one person who looked totally calm, sitting watching a movie as if nothing was happening. It was Mark! When things finally subsided and returned to normal I leaned over to him and asked if he even realized what had just happened. He barked back that he was absolutely terrified and tried all he could to focus on the screen to keep from losing control. Well we landed without incident but Mark did have to rewatch part of this movie.

This was our final night of the trip and our flight back to the U.S. was in the morning so we decided to stay at the closest hotel for the night, the Barcelona Airport Hotel. It was a short shuttle ride over and it was one of the oddest hotels I’d ever stayed in. It was ultra modern and highly unusual.

After checking in we went to the elevator and stopped at the 2nd floor. Three of us were on this floor and Mark was on the 4th. A sign in the hall listed the room numbers on that floor, but ours was not listed. We went back down the elevator and went too far and ended up at a restaurant in the basement that we didn’t even realize the hotel had. We found the another elevator and that one did bring us to our rooms.

Walking through the hall it looked like we were more in the space station than a hotel. There were no doors, just very long curved hallways. Actually there were doors but they were built into the modern paneling of the hall in a way to conceal them.

After dropping off luggage and trying unsuccessfully to contact Mark we went back to the restaurant. After about 30 minutes we finally received a text from Mark, he had run into the same problem we had earlier and had been searching all this time for his room and had finally just found it.

No more sight seeing this time! It was now late so after our evening meal we headed right to bed.