September 23, 2014
Budapest. Day 1.
We unfolded; a sleep in and a leisurely breakfast, cereal, scrambled eggs, grilled tomatoes, toast and the weird coffee I bought, which was cheaper than all the other coffees, because, as I found out when I got home, was 50% roasted barley. I got to like it though.
Next, not so leisurely was the washing of the clothes, then a walk over to Keleti {east} station to find out how we were to get back to London. We had left our CTC polythene bike bags at home, so were not flying. I didn't even check air fares, couldn't be arsed to find out about getting them boxed up. Potential alternatives, sleeper to Paris – booked out, sleeper to Prague, change for Berlin, Amsterdam the same, train to Munich, swish new Austrian trains don't take bikes. Fuck it. The woman on the enquiry desk wasn't prepared to put in as much work on it as I would have for myself, so we gave up on Keleti station. I had an alternative plan. It would be harder work, not cheap, but it would get us home. It might even be fun for someone who doesn't mind a bit of travelling.
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Another thing we had to sort out, was accommodation, for a third night. We decided to stay a day longer. Barbara texted the landlady – room already booked. We found another small appartment, with a much larger outfit, round the corner just off Kiraly utca, in a busy retail/restaurant/ housing development.
A bed for the night sorted, in the evening we walked over the chain bridge to Buda, up the hill to the castle, in the dark, then back down to Pest, Kiraly utca where we ate out at a restaurant, near where we would spend the next night. We both chose duck breast, mine with the addition of grilled goose liver; “This may be the most beautiful thing I've ever eaten,” I said to the waiter. By then I'd drunk most of the bottle of slightly spicy red wine, he'd earlier picked out for us, advising against my first choice. That was almost as beautiful. They do cook well in this country.
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