Budapest - Under Construction

Budapest is a very old and classic looking city that reminded me a little of an upmarket Prague.  However, our hotel is a modern building in a modern block which is part of  multi floor shopping centre with the underground trains below and mainline trains at ground level.

We have a nice gym and sauna but no pool.  I think Claire brought our swimwear but not shoes.  Phew!  A nice sauna sounds good for tomorrow morning followed by a shower and executive breakfast.

We have spent quite a lot of time in our executive lounge on our first day.  Maybe because its raining all the time and we are not used to being spoilt.  The wifi is really fast; even faster than our top of the range BT one at home.

Even though it was drizzling all day we still had a very long walk around but we never really found any restaurant that we both fancied for lunch.  I think its because we stuck to the main roads where all they have is high street food like, burgers, pizza, pasta, kebabs etc.  very few local restaurants.  I guess that we need to get off the beaten track.  This picture is their parliament buildings.

Most of Budapest seems to be “under construction”.  I guess that maybe they are using the slow winter period to fix everything.  Its a bit of a pain in the neck walking around all the wire fences that ruin your views.  The weather didn't help, Claire was freezing, especially her hands; she kept having to put them down my trousers to warm up.

We didn't cross the river; maybe tomorrow we will get the bus trip so as not to miss anything.  We made our way to the house of Terror but were disappointed to find that it was all about war victims so we didn't go in.

This wasn't far fro the Opera house where we thought that we might find a few decent restaurants.  However the area was the Jewish part with all the really expensive jewelry shops and the restaurant were out of our price bracket.

We settled for a McDonalds coffee and headed back towards our hotel.  We ended up walking around the shopping centre where we found one of those areas where they have all the food places together.  It was very mediocre as they microwaved everything.  I did try a local dish that had a chicken breast on the bottom with a sphere of broccoli on top and all smothered in cheese with roast potatoes in their jackets.  it sounds better than it was.  Claire had a spaghetti carbanara but it was barely warm.  Never mind, we did have a beer at the Hilton Cafe.  Also the coffee and cakes are really nice in our lounge where I am writing this.  We seem to have the place to ourselves; never mind more wine for the two of us.  See you tomorrow.