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The last bit of our Malev flight from Brussels to Budapest is rather bumpy, but our bags arrive quickly and the bus to metro station Köbanaya-Kispest is waiting outside.

Budapest 2002

Gaby
2004-01-25 13:19:01

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The Gulash Archipelago

The last bit of our Malev flight from Brussels to Budapest is rather bumpy, but our bags arrive quickly and the bus to metro station Köbanaya-Kispest is waiting outside.

Hotel Nemzeti is located in a busy street of Pest, near the metro Blaha Lujza tér, near a McDonalds. We have a comfortable and very quiet room at the back. The hotel is built in the Secession era, as so many Budapest buildings, and is beautiful on the inside, with lovely staircases.

It is lunchtime. Restaurant "Cathedral" near the Elizabeth bridge is decorated with gargoyles. In Budapest, service is not included in the bill, so staff is extremely helpful. We both have chicken gulash with dumplings. We cross the bridge to Buda. The wind is blowing so fiercely along the river that we seek refuge for a few minutes in a telephone booth; it is that cold. We take the Chain Bridge back to Pest. At John Bull's English pub we stop for an Irish coffee to get us warm again. The shops are closed by now and we head back to our hotel. We stay in and have our evening meal in the sumptuous hotel dining room with its stained glass ceiling, where we are entertained by a musical duo on the violin and keyboard.

Elizabeth, after whom so many streets, squares and bridges are named, is of course Elizabeth of Wittelsbach, Sissi, the famous Empress of Austria and Hungary, tragic anorexic figure, reputedly of great beauty in her youth, but shunning photographers long before her fourtieth birthday not in the least on account of her rotting teeth. Oh dear, oh dear.

On Sunday morning, we look for a shopping centre that - according to the guide book - is open on a Sunday, but it seems to have closed down. Instead we try the cakes in the konditorei nearby. In St. Istvan's church, the numerous extra large candleholders are lit by economy bulbs - very progressive. As the Houses of Parliament feature ...