Good Food, Good Drinks, Good Company

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

After a couple 3 Euro 1 liter beers and a long day yesterday in general, we slept in a bit before heading out of the hotel a little after 10 o’clock this morning. Our first stop today was the House of Terror. In 1944, during the domination of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party, the building at Andrassy Utca 60, now the museum was once known as the “House of Loyalty” and was the party headquarters of the Hungarian Nazis. Then between 1945 and 1956, the infamous communist terror organizations, the AVO and its successor, the AVH, took up residence in the building. The museum commemorates the victims of terror and serves as a memento, reminding its patrons of the dreadful acts of terrorist dictatorships.

After an educational but depressing morning, we sought the comfort of familiarity and had lunch at Burger King. After lunch we headed on to the St. Stephen’s Basilica. Plans for the Basilica started in 1845 but the building was not complete until 1889. The Basilica is home to “the holy right hand”, which is the 1000 year old remains of the right hand of Saint Stephen, the Basilica’s namesake. Not to undermine the importance of this relic to this Church and its followers, but I found it a bit creepy, and then ridiculous when in the middle of taking a picture of the little shrine in which the hand is laid, the light illuminating it turned off and there was a sign saying that you had to pay 200 Hungarian Forints in order to illuminate the hand, no thank-you. From the Basilica we made our way to the riverfront and made our way down to the Parliament House, which was even more impressive up close than it was from the top of Castle Hill in Buda. After walking around the Parliament building we made our way back down the Danube to our hotel and had a bit of a rest.

After a short rest and a cup of coffee we were on our way to Gellert Hill to go to the Gellert Baths and the Citadel. Unfortunately we did not make it to the Citadel or to the top of Gellert Hill as we spent a little too long in the Baths. The Baths were interesting. The building is architecturally the most pleasant of the Baths in Budapest, so I’ve been told, but only has one cold and one thermal pool indoors and one cold and one thermal pool outdoors. We visited both the indoor and outdoor thermal pools which were very relaxing before heading back again to the hotel to clean up before meeting Jören and Živka for dinner.

We met Jören and Živka outside their hotel around 7:00 p.m. and Živka recommended that we try to find a pub/bar that she had been taken to once before near Blaha Luza Ter on a previous visit to Budapest. The pub was a “dive-bar” type pub with a great atmosphere and cheap drinks. I raved about the less than 2 US dollar wine I had last night, but tonight I had wine that cost 200 Hungarian Forints or approximately 90 cents US, pretty outrageous deal, and it was good as well! The food was also extremely inexpensive. Last night we paid 8500 Hungarian Forints for 2 entrees, a beer, and 2 glasses of wine, which is approximately 38 US dollars, but tonight we had 2 entrees for 3200 Hungarian Forints or about $14 dollars. Tim had what he said may have been the best chicken sandwich he has ever had, and I had a Serbian dish called Lescovich (SP?). After a couple rounds of drinks and our meals we walked around the corner to a “supposed” bar, but I was a bit worried that Jören and Živka had just been buttering us up and were taking us to their own version of the House of Terror because the bar had no sign and you just walked into this building that look closed and had graffiti all over the walls and then the elevator opened and there was a guy in tails in the elevator with a dirty looking cooler full of little liquor bottles he would sell to you on your way up. Even once the elevator opened up it appeared that we were entering an abandoned building, but then we turned the corner and saw the first forms of life and a stairwell leading to an amazing rooftop terrace bar. It was amazing, a night we will never forget and an opportunity we would have never had if we hadn’t met this amazing couple. At this unnamed bar we enjoyed another couple rounds of drinks, and quite possibly the biggest glasses of wine I have ever seen, the first glass came in a juice glass, which we thought was big, but then the second round of wine came in beer mugs, yep, beer mugs (don’t worry I took a picture!). Good food, good drinks, good company, all in all we had an amazing time in Budapest, if this is any indication, I think we have some great times ahead of us