Today is our last full day of holiday and TBH, it’s an extra day. We’ve done everything that we really wanted to do and seen pretty much everything that we wanted to see. It feels like it would be a good day to go home but that is actually tomorrow’s plan so we’ll need to think of something.
And the first thing we think of is sleeping late. Well late for us which is actually about 8.30. We made a ginourmous omelette with most of the remaining eggs and Slovak cheese. Then we decided to try visiting a real “local” market, one that doesn’t cater to tourists. A short bus ride took us to Lehel Market which had the same basic setup as the Central Market (food on the ground floor, other stuff upstairs). In this market there were no signs in English, massive stands of paprika, or Hungarian handicrafts. Just fruit, veg, meat, and clothing, shoes, and knock off designer bags. And lots of people doing their weekly shopping. And drinking beer. There was an inordinate number of people at the beer vendors for 10.30 in the morning!
Our “real” Budapest experience complete, we thought we might consider some of the “nice if we have time” options since we obviously had time. So back to the Buda side of the river for a stop at the National Gallery for some culture. You could definitely tell it was a weekend because the crowds were three times thicker around the castle than the last time we were there. AND there was a queue to get into the art museum. Seriously? Okay, fine. We know how to queue. And so we spent the next 90 minutes or so wandering the various galleries and seeing Hungarian depictions of medieval life, expressions of post-modern despair, and a couple of paintings by famous people we had heard of. To show you what art connoisseurs we are, our favorite work was one done entirely in Legos!
We opted for a repeat Spanish lunch – tapas and white sangria this time – before heading to the flat to do the bulk of our packing. We may also have consumed most of a package of chocolate wafers and an entire bottle of fizzy Slovakian rosé. Oops. We caught up on some of the Olympics by prowling around YouTube and I got to watch the women’s 8 rowing final. I can’t even dream of being that good.
Then it was time for our swan song. We have spent 14 days on a road trip along the Danube and tonight we would take one of the ubiquitous river cruises to complete the trip and say goodbye to Budapest. I had chosen a 19.30 sailing to try to see a good sunset and avoid the heat. Neither ended up being relevant. The weather was glorious and “cool” – around 25 degrees but people were putting on jackets and jumpers anyway! And while we know that the sun set, the view wasn’t that amazing. Still we had some lousy local wine and popcorn and counted all the women on board for hen parties (there were at least 3 “bride to be” sashes spotted).
At last it was done but we still needed something to eat and pizza sounded like just the ticket. We wandered to a dedicated GF pizza place I had found but there were only open for take out. Boo. There was another one much closer to our flat but it would take forever to get there by public transport (and our 72 hour passes had expired) so we opted for the obvious choice: Hungarian Uber! In 8 minutes flat we were seated at an outdoor table, the last ones to be seated and only allowed to order pizza because it was too close to closing time. I had the most amazing chicken and broccoli pizza with a crust that was to die for. Frank declared his mushroom and prosciutto pizza delicious even by gluten eating standards. A ten minute walk brought us back to our Hungarian home for the last time.
Data for today:
- Steps: 23,397
- Tour groups sneered at: 12
- Modes of transportation taken: 3
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