Budapest – the river and Buda

This morning we gratefully board a little boat for a tour on the Danube to see the city from both sides.  Both Pest and Buda.  The boat tour company we chose was great.  Not very crowded, each passenger gets a  headset with commentary in many languages, and cute attendants who brought free lemonade and water on request.  It was much much cooler on the water, and we enjoyed every minute of this one 1/2 hour tour.

You may recognize the Parliament, you’ve seen the same view (only better photographed) from the Viking Cruise adverts on PBS.  Our little cruise was much less pricey…but the views from the river just as impressive.

Also note the business complexes and industrial style apartment buildings.

After our cruise, we ventured over to the grand market for paprika (the only souvenir I can fit in our (whoops my) back pack and to find some lunch.  An amazing place, we had fun.

Despite the heat (90 degrees), and fortified by a lunch of salad and mint-lemonade, we  decided to cross the river to walk on the Buda side.  It was really hot, but pleasant under the trees.  Our plan was to take yet another funicular (sorry guys but we just love ’em) up to the castle.  Here’s our walk along the river and the views from the castle, complete with sentry guards standing at attention in full uniform in the heat.

We ended our day down in a simple, cool cellar café near our apartment.  We’d passed it several tines as we headed out on our walks. They had a chalk board promoting their Chicken Paprakash for 6 Euros – sounded good to us.

There were two regulars eating and chatting with the owner and then just us,  The owner recommended the goulash which we tried, very good and we shared an order of the Chicken Paprakash – a perfect Budapest ending.

Tomorrow, we take a bus from Budapest to Zagreb to visit our friends in Croatia.  All we have been told is that we are being high jacked to their island home – a 300 year old stone villa —  and it sounds like heaven.

I’m not sure about internet connection so Travel Barmy may go dark for awhile.  Will catch you up as soon as I can.

Just looked at our tickets and our bus trip is four hours over Hungarian mountain passes. No train service. Wish us luck…