WE DIDN’T REALLY WANT TO GO TO CAIRO, but Egypt Air had by far the best prices from Amman to Budapest, even factoring in the visa fee and an overnight room. But the airport Novotel wasn’t much of a hardship; decent room, good TV and wifi and the best breakfast we’ve had in months. Best of all, they have a free airport shuttle, keeping away the most hated and deceitful taxi drivers in the world.
Mathias Church, Buda
Tourist season is in full swing in Budapest with high hotel prices and limited availability, especially for last-minute travelers like us, quite a change from our first visit 13 years ago. That was actually our first low budget “pack a bag, buy a guidebook and hop on a plane” trip. A friend said how much she like Budapest and Sandy told Connie that Prague was the cat’s meow, so off we went.
The Undaunted Toursits
Now that our Schengen “time-out” is over, we decided to revisit Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic before meeting Connie’s nieces in Rome, so here we are. Once again we are staying on the Buda side of the Danube, but we’ve upgraded from the bleak pension of 2002 to the Mercure Hotel Most of the tourist stuff is on the Pest side but public transportation is good and cheap. Even though we are right next to a metro station we climbed the hill to Mathias Church and eventually worked our way down to Chain Bridge over the Danube and into Pest. A light rain brought out the umbrellas but hardly deterred the tour groups who have to cram everything into a few short hours. Bits and pieces returned as we lollygagged in the rain, taking new photos and trying to remember being here before — long before we began these on-line journals.
Busapest Opera House
We followed a bit of the Rick Steve’s walking tour of Budapest, all the way to the Opera House, which I think I confused in my mind with the one in Prague. We’ll get it sorted our eventually. And after a nice lasagne lunch — another good thing about being back in Europe is food that looks and tastes like it should — we reversed our course across the river and over Castle Hill to our hotel. It’s good to be back home.
