[ <<previous | index | next >> ]
We woke up a little before the alarm rang at 08:00 today, so jumped out of bed as soon as it went off. We had the last of our muesli and milk for breakfast. We had a bit of left over milk, so I drank some in a glass, but I got quite full and so we ended up pouring a bit down the drain.
Our hosts had given us until 11:00 to check out, saying they'd be back to pick up the key and clean the apartment for the next guests. This gave us a couple of hours to go for a bit of a walk and see some last sights in Budapest before returning and getting ready to leave with our stuff. We took a short walk in a different direction where we hadn't explored yet. We passed the Jókai Tér square near the Oktagon metro station, which had a few of the restaurants our host had recommended. Here also was the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, which had a somewhat impressive front facade. But we didn't spend long here since it was morning and not really restaurant time.
We walked over a few blocks to the New York Café, which bills itself as "The most beautiful café in the world". M Googled it to find out some info earlier and told me that wearing shorts was not allowed in the café, and that a cup of coffee cost 9.50€ (or A$17). I read a few reviews and they talked about the string orchestra and piano playing inside. When we got there, we saw it was no joke, although they did actually let me into the foyer area with my shorts. We just stayed inside a couple of minutes and took some photos of the exceptionally lavish interior before leaving again. it was worth seeing, but almost definitely not worth having anything in there.
We walked back through the Jewish quarter of Budapest. We saw several kosher restaurants and food stores, and stopped in at Judapest, a Jewish art store, which had a few interesting things. It was just after 10:00 and the day was already getting very warm, even in the shade, with the maximum predicted to be 37°C in Budapest today. As we walked back home, we passed a courtyard leading off a nearby street that we hadn't been down before, which contained rows of food stalls. The gate was closed and it said that it opened at 11:00. This sounded like a potential place to have lunch a bit later before heading to Budapest-Keleti train station.
Returning to our apartment, we cooled down a bit in the air conditioning and packed our bags to leave. I checked e-mail, joking that I needed to see how long our train had been delayed today... and found a message from ÖBB saying that or train was indeed running 48 minutes late! I grabbed the garbage bags to run them down to the bins on the ground floor, and when I opened the door, the owner and his wife were outside, collecting cleaning equipment from a cupboard in the foyer. They greeted us and we handed over the key. They asked us how our time in Budapest was, and we told them we'd had a great time. We grabbed our bags and were on our way.
It was too early for our planned lunch, so we went around the block to Circusz Cafe, another of our host's recommendations, this one for breakfasts. We went in and got a table and saw that the breakfasts the other customers were having looked very impressive indeed. Giant servings of pancakes, waffles, eggs benedict, and so on. A couple behind us were having a savoury breakfast each, and then also splitting a giant serve of strawberry covered waffles. Having had breakfast and not wanting to spoil lunch, we just ordered green juice for M. and a ginger shot for myself, and a croissant to supplement the smaller portion of remaining muesli I'd had earlier. As we had these slowly, we saw other people arrive and also order breakfasts for each person, plus a serve of waffles to share afterwards. It seemed like the thing to do!
After lingering for some time in the cool air conditioning, we braved the heat to go to the food stalls and get some lunch. There were fortunately seats in the shade, and we selected ones shaded by an adjacent building, rather than under a tent roof, as those ones were hotter. We tried some lángos—deep fried bread dough topped with various things. M. had one with sweeps cheese and rocket leaves, while I tried one with sour cream, grated cheese, bacon bits, and red onion jam. They came from the stall piping hot and were delicious.
Lunch done, we walked to Astoria metro station to catch a train to Budapest-Keleti station and wait for our train to Vienna. On the way we passed the Great Synagogue, which was an interesting sight. When we got to Budapest-Keleti, our train was on the departure board, with no delay indicated. The station is a graceful old Victorian grand European style station building—beautiful, but in need of a bit of repair. It only had four platforms inside, with an extra five or so tacked on either side outside. it was also very hot inside, with a hot breeze blowing through. We found one seat near the main doors and took turns sitting there with the bags. I explored and found a side entrance foyer that was magnificently decorated, with gold ornaments and paintings of scenes on the walls, including one of a railway handcar attended by angels.
The departure board changed to show a delay of 10 minutes, and we wondered if it was going to do the trick of updating every ten minutes to add an additional 10-minute delay. But eventually we got a platform assigned—number 3 out the left side of the building—and moved out there to wait. It turned out our train was 13 minutes late arriving. We climbed on board and found ourselves along in a compartment of six seats, which was pretty nice, although the train was very old and felt like it was a real Soviet-era piece of hardware, with sagging brown velour sprung seats and a faint smell of old furniture. It was hot inside, but after a few minutes the air conditioning turned on, and though it did blow coolish air through the vents it was never very effective at cooling down the compartment.
We pulled out about 20 minutes late. At the next stop, still within Budapest, a young guy got into our compartment. He was Hungarian and spoke only halting English, but had better German, so sometimes we used German to communicate concepts that he had trouble expressing in English. He turned out to be a cook, on his way to a new job in Linz in Austria, where he was apparently going to be doing bartending, even though he told his new boss he'd never done that before. He saw me doing some sketching in my sketchbook during the trip, and was interested to see what I'd drawn of his home town, Budapest, so I showed him and he was impressed. He said he was not a good artist, but he showed us a photo on his phone of a painting he did when he was a kid, a suitably childish rendering of Batman.
He actually spent most of the trip sitting out in the corridor, talking on his phone. We had the door closed initially, thinking it would help keep the cool air conditioning in, but we discovered that it was actually cooler in the corridor and opening the door made things better. At one point the small table M. was using to hold her watercolours collapsed and her paints fell all over the floor, so we had to pick them up and reassemble all the little pots into the palette box. There was an announcement over the PA in Hungarian, and the guy translated and told us our train was expected to arrive in Vienna an hour late. We said it had only left Budapest 20 minutes late, and he just shrugged and said this sort of thing happens in Hungary.
As we approached Vienna, the sun disappeared behind thick grey clouds, and we saw lightning and heard thunder. A heavy rain fell for several minutes, but stopped again. I checked the weather radar for the Vienna region and found storms sweeping east across the country. We were happy about this as whopped it would cool the hot day down before we arrived.
As it turned out, our train was indeed about 63 minutes late into Vienna. Fortunately we had no plans for the evening, so it wasn't a problem. We caught the U-bahn to Karlsplatz to walk to our apartment. But when we got off the train I had no idea which way to go to find the exit nearest out accommodation, and I chose randomly, and very very poorly. We ended up at the Vienna State Opera, which was about the worst possible exit we could have chosen, an extra few blocks from where we needed to go. But the day had indeed cooled down and the sun was hidden so the walk back to our room wasn't so bad.
Walking back through Naschmarkt, we spotted a decent looking pizza place, where the pizzas that customers had looked very good. We decided to just take it easy and go there for dinner after dropping out bags at the apartment. We were worn out from the very hot day and the longer than expected train journey. So about fifteen minutes later we were back at Al Bacio Pizzeria. We took the table that the staff were having a cigarette break at, as they jumped up to serve us. This table was nestled under an awning, against the wall, where it would be protected from any rain, hopefully. We were a bit concerned that the storm would hit and there would be heavy rain and wind, but as it turned out we only got a few drops of rain and some thunder as the storm cell must have skirted around us. M. ordered a pizza margherita, while I got the calzone, which came with ham and salami inside. They were indeed very good, with thin Neapolitan style dough, but blistered and chewy around the edges.
After eating, we returned to our apartment, showered off the sweat and grime of a hot day, and relaxed by doing some of our drawing in the evening.
[ <<previous | index | next >> ]