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We rose with the alarm at 08:00 after last night's late night. I ran down to the supermarket at the end of our street to get some muesli and milk for breakfast while M. got up more slowly. We ate about half the muesli, leaving some for breakfast tomorrow. Then we prepared for a morning out. Since the day was going to be very hot in the afternoon, we planned to go to the Great Market Hall of Budapest first thing, then cross over the Erszébet Bridge to visit Buda Castle, then walk back to our room for a rest in the heat of the afternoon, getting lunch somewhere along the way as we felt hungry.
First we had to walk to the Great Market Hall. We went west to the northern end of the famous Váci Utca shopping street, then walked south along its length. Since it was before 10:00, most of the shops weren't open yet, but many of the cafes were. We passed a place that M. wanted to go back and have another look at when it opened, and I saw a Rubik's Cube shop that had a sign mentioning an exhibition celebrating 50 years of cubes.
At the far end of Váci Utca was the Great Market Hall. This sprawled over three floors of a street block covered with wrought iron latticework and a roof of tiles punctuated by glass. We walked the ground floor first, which had stalls selling all manner of fresh food: meat, smallgoods, fruit, vegetables, cheeses, bread, spices, nuts, and so on. We'd expected to be able to get a snack ready to eat here, but this floor didn't have any sort of food ready-to-eat. I bought a tin of smoked hot paprika to take home for my mother to cook with. We found one stall selling cakes and slices and M. bought a piece of cherry slice for a snack, eating half before passing it to me. When I bit into it and started chewing, I felt the awful crunch of biting a cherry seed and shattering it into fragments. I had to spit it out as I didn't want to swallow any of the seed fragments. I was more careful and found two more seeds which I spat out (into the bag the slice had come in), but in the last mouthful I shattered another seed. Oh well, at least it tasted good.
We went downstairs which promised more for, thinking it might be down there, but this was a smaller area consisting of just one of the three big aisles above, and mostly selling seafood or pickles. There was also an Aldi down there. M. wanted an iced coffee and we hand't found anywhere yet, so went to a place we'd seen signposted at the far end of the ground floor - it was sort of out in an ancillary section that had just a few handcraft stalls and a cafe booth. She got her coffee here.
So finally we went upstairs to the first floor, and here we found where all the ready food was! There were proper restaurants and stalls selling cooked sausages, goulash, lángos, chips, and various other things. But this occupied only one corner of the upper floor. The rest was dedicated to souvenir stands, clothing, and various nick-knacks. This was the least interesting section and we walked through it quickly.
We left the market and walked over to the Erszébet Bridge, then across the Danube River to the western Buda side of the city. As we began walking north towards Buda Castle, M. spotted a small shop that she wanted to look in. They had small notebooks with artistic covers of Budapest scenes and she bought one. The day was really heating up by now, and when we stopped to drink some water from our bottle, the friendly lady in the shop told us to drink it up and then refill the bottle from her small kitchen. So we did that and were very grateful.
We continued walking to the Castle, which was uphill a fair way. It was getting close to 13:00 and we were getting hungry. We stumbled straight into a restaurant called VakVarjú VarjúVár, which was halfway up the hill to the castle. We got a table outside where there was a gentle breeze to help keep us cool. M. ordered a trio of dips with bread: goat cheese, paprika and walnut, and smoky eggplant. I ordered a platter of meats and cheeses which came with pickled onions, a bit of salad, and bread. M. had an iced coffee while I tried the strawberry and basil lemonade. The food was really good, and the drinks were refreshing and cool. My plater had slices of three types of cured sausage, a paste about halfway between liverwurst and pulled pork, Spanish style jamon, smoked cheese, and slices of brie, with pickled red onion slices and small white cocktail onions. We considered this a great find at random for lunch.
After our rest and recharged with food, we continued up to the castle, taking the lift from the restaurant to avoid some—but by no means all—of the remaining stairs. But it was worth it when we got to the top, for the panoramic view over the Danube towards the Pest side of the city, and also the spectacular castle buildings. We took many photos, and walked around to look at the buildings and statues and fountains. We didn't pay to go inside and tour the palace, museum, and national library, as we didn't want to spend too long here. It was very hot and we used umbrellas to keep the sun off, and were pretty much the only ones doing so.
Returning was easier, walking down the hillside through a lovely series of switchbacks through dense trees. We walked on a little bridge over the funicular railway that offered visitors an easier way up the hill. Eventually we made it down to the end of the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, which we crossed back to the Pest side of the city. We walked back to our apartment, via the Rododendron art shop that M. wanted to see yesterday. While she browsed there, I went to the corner of the street to Beer Brother craft beer bar and had a refreshing weissbier. I finished just as she arrived to rejoin me, and we went back to our room.
By now it was about 16:00, quite a bit later than I'd expected us to return! We relaxed in the air conditioned room and did some sketching of our travels. I also tried to find a good place to have dinner, somewhere with Hungarian food, but also vegetarian options. I tried searching up all the places that our accommodation host suggested, but none of them had much choice for vegetarian dishes. So I tried asking ChatGPT to make a list. The very first one it came up with was Kisharang Etkezde, a small place which it noted was highly recommended for its several interesting vegetarian choices, and which was a short walk away. Some of the others also looked interesting, but were further away, or had no reservations available for tonight. Kisharang didn't even take reservations, so we decided to go there and see if we could get a table.
As it turned out, the place was very busy and all the tables taken, but when we asked if we could get a table soon, the waiter said if we just waited a minute some people were leaving and he'd clean the table for us. So we were seated soon at a table just inside the door, adjacent to another table for two, set just a few centimetres away. The menu did indeed have several good looking vegetarian choices and vegetarian options for some of the other dishes that could also contain meat. We chose to start by sharing the intriguing cold raspberry soup with cream, which was delicious and refreshing in the heat. M. ordered hand made noodles with cabbage, while I tried Hungarian rösti with the chicken paprikash option (they also had about four other meats and a vegetarian mushroom option).
As we were awaiting our main dishes, an older couple came in and got the table next to us. They asked if we spoke English and we helped them figure out the menu. The woman wanted to know if there were any fish dishes, as they hadn't been handed menus yet. I didn't recollect seeing any, and M. grabbed two menus from the counter behind us and gave them to them. We chatted a bit as we all ate our meals - they were from Florida in the USA, but she was originally Jamaican. They were travelling on a Danube river cruise that began in Bucharest, but Budapest was their last stop before flying back home tomorrow. She'd recently written some sort of self-help book that had been published and was thinking of starting a second.
For dessert we ordered an "apple pie", which turned out to really be a sort cake with an apple filling. It was good, especially with the very good vanilla ice cream it came with. And it was much larger than the photo in the menu had suggested. Overall it was a really good meal, and a fantastic suggestion thanks to ChatGPT.
We walked back home via the Hungarian Parliament Building, which is a huge sprawling complex in a Gothic style building running along the bank of the Danube. Twilight was beginning as we approached, and I thought it was going to be disappointingly dark, but as we watched the floodlights came on, illuminating the building beautifully and providing perfect photo opportunities. We waked all the way around the building, returning on the river side along the bank, where many people were strolling, or sitting with their legs dangling over the edge above the river, enjoying the warm night air. Some people were even having a barbecue there, using a public picnic table to eat on. Eventually we turned inland and returned back to our accommodation for our last night in Budapest before retiring to Vienna tomorrow.
One notable thing we've noticed about Budapest is that all of the escalators are really fast. So fast that despite being very used to escalators, we had to pause to gauge the speed before stepping on. Not just the first one we had to use, but every single escalator we've found in the city.
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