Today, param and Thea showed us around Budapest. It was an amazing day of going all over this huge city. We used all sorts of public transport (bus, boat and trolley), walked miles uphill on a twisty path of steps and macadam. It is well worth every short breath you take for the vista you are rewarded with at the top. We visited a ruin pub and a few other pubs as well. All the food we have sampled so far has been great. Here we are, pictured left to right, Thia, Paul, Debbie, and of course, that’s param on the right.

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param and Thia took us around to a lot of places we wouldn’t have gotten to on our own. They were able to navigate around town, jumping on buses, trolley cars, a boat bus, and a even a vernicular, to make sure we saw the highlights of the city. And it’s a huge city, Hungary’s biggest by far at over 2 million people. Some places were packed with tourists, other places were small out of the wall spots where there weren’t any other tourists. The Buda side offered the big attractions of the old church, the presidential palace, and the old wall and citadel overlooking the city. It was a perfectly clear day so we could see for miles around the flat city up and down the Danube. The Pest (pronounced “pescht”) side had smaller parks, “ruin bars” because of their location inside large, holllowed-out buildings that were otherwise abandoned, and our hotel.

param had all the places to go listed out on paper. We hit most of the main sites. He just needed a flag or a funny ornament on a stick to be properly identified as a tour guide. We first took the city bus to the the Church of St. Matthew, then we walked over to the old castle and president’s palace. We heard some traditional Hungarian folk music from these guys.

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We then took a vernacular funicular (thanks to aufauna for putting the fun back in that word!) down to the road level where we then walked over and up to citadel (and I do mean UP).

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We took a river bus ride south to where we had lunch (the river bus is something new for Budapest) and a lovely lunch spot at the end of the bus route (Buda side).

We then took some trolley connections back to Pest side of the river to see the parliament building and the memorial of the shoes. We then decided it was time for a nice cool beer and headed off to a ruin pub.

Ruin pubs are pubs that are main inside the ruins of old buildings. They set up a bar, some tables a bit of covering here and there and some music and there you have it a bar.

The problem with ruin bars is that when the owner of the property decides that they can make more money building or selling the property to build flats or shops, then the pubs get evicted and just disappear or if they are lucky move on to other ruins.

After the ruin bar we then walked to another nice place that was a wine garden kind of place. Seating was outside the gates of a garden park. Thea and I discovered that we are “skiing” soul mates, in that we like to drink port by the fire and hold down the fort for the other skiers.

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