Author: Andy

We started today by going to the post office to mail my mom a postcard. We bought a cocoa Kurtosh cake outside our hostel on the way there. After that, we went to the heroes square via the subway. It drizzled a bit early in the day, and everyone seemed to be carrying an umbrella. A lady tried selling us umbrellas, but we turned her down. There were also umbrellas hanging in our hostel, but we weren’t sure we should use them, so we didn’t. In hindsight, we probably should have gotten an umbrella, because we just got poured on on our way home tonight. After heroes square, we came back to our hostel, and went to Castro Bistro for goulash and also had an eggplant pita. The eggplant was actually hummus, which surprised us. Also, I finally figured out the custom for paying the bill. I asked for the bill, gave my server the cash I was paying him, and told him how much change I wanted. The bill was 2880 and I wanted to pay 3200 with tip, I paid with a 10,000. I asked for 6800, and the server ecstatically said thank you. We weren’t sure if that was because the tip was over 10%, or because he was surprised we finally figured out the tipping custom. Then, we went to the bath house. We paid for two admissions and one private cabin . We started with the large pools outside. I saw the locals playing chess, and tried to ask a few for a game, but I was turned down. There was a whirlpool, I think they called it the lazy river. It was a lot of fun being spun around by the jets in that pool, it went very fast. We went inside, and tried out just about every pool, as well as a few saunas. The medicinal pools felt different, we weren’t quite sure why. We went back outside, and I went into the large pool where they played chess while Linda walked around taking picture. I found a chess board without an opponent, so I hung around it for a while. A lady was in front, drinking beer and talking to a guy, both older. I motioned to the chess board to the guy, and he motioned to her, she agreed to play me. It was hard to focus on the game and think multiple moves ahead. I was up pieces for a while because she traded a rook for a knight. At one point, she said I moved twice after talking to a guy in the crowd that came to watch. I think he was wrong about that, and she put my knight where I didn’t move it, and said it was my turn. I wanted to avoid confrontation, so I played it out. At any rate, I got spanked in chess by a drunk old Hungarian woman. We went home for a shower, and planned on going out to a restaurant highly rated on yelp. We couldn’t get a table, but our backup plan was Sir Lancelot, a medieval themed restaurant. We had soup and duck with potatoes and cabbage. While we ate, there were people performing things like juggling, lifting things, balancing a wine glass on a dagger, and belly dancing. We left in hopes of stopping at the hammock ruin pub, or the labyrinth ruin pub, but they were closed. The whole walk/ride home it was pouring. We stopped to buy a bottle of wine on our way.

So, we had a crazy time getting to Budapest today. (Spoiler alert – we made it) We woke up at the British ass crack of dawn in Stansted to catch a bus to the airport. We had some issues deciding which side of the road the bus should arrive on, so we wound up taking a later bus to the airport. Once we got there, we waited to check our bags, only to find out that we were at the wrong bag check. We went tot he correct bag check, but our line barely moved. For the longest time, there was no excuse, but we moved lines, and a guy from our first line wound up holding our line up by stopping his line from moving. He intended to check a bag, but didn’t realize he had to pay both ways. It was painful to watch. At any rate, I dropped Linda in the race to the gate in an effort that at least one of us would catch the flight. We both made it, and broke a sweat, so I bought a couple drinks from a vending machine for 2 pounds each, which works out to be $7.50. One of the guys at our bus stop had already cautioned us that London is a money pit. So we slept as much as we could on our flight and caught transit to our hostel. It seems that a mom and her daughter run the hostel, and they were very friendly. We mentioned having to catch an early flight, and they said the train wouldn’t be running, but that they would drive us for 60 euro. Linda had quite the expression on her face, and they said no, 16 euro. We headed out to catch lunch at Koleves. We split some tapas and a duck curry meal. It was very good. They gave me seltzer water with my coffee. The restaurant was Yiddish. We are staying near the Jewish neighborhood Andrássy út. After that, we walked past the Synagogue and walked past the Hungarian (Jewish) Museum and Archives. We went to St. Steven’s Bascilica. Linda convinced me to walk up to the top of it, which only cost us $4 USD, whereas the Shandon Bells were $10 euro, which is about $13 USD. I freaked out on my way up there, but we stopped (a couple times) so that I would collect my cool, and proceed. Once we made it to the top, I waited while Linda walked around. After that, we moved on to a market at the Vörösmarty tér metro stop. We moved on to take some pictures of buildings, and walk across the chain bridge. We grabbed dinner at the market on our way back and listened to street music. We had too much trouble trying to find our metro stop, so I convinced Linda to walk home. We stopped at a 0-24 store to buy water and wine, some of which we drank before heading to ruin pubs. (We were mistaken that Buda Castle wasn’t Parliament and we didn’t know Parliament when we saw it) The first ruin pub was Mika Tivadar Mulató, which didn’t seem too different. The ruin pubs are places that were thrown together with junk to make up tables, seating and ambience. The second ruin pub was much truer to its name. We went to Szimpla Kert. We saw quite a mix of furniture there, from a hodge-podge of a mix of chairs, to a snowboard converted to a bench, to a bathtub converted to a bench. They had hookahs, which I wanted, but we decided against. On our way in, a guy was getting bounced.

Today we took a Paddywagon tour through the Irish countryside tot he Cliffs of Moher. On the way, we stopped at Burren, which was a rocky area along the ocean. We found something interesting out about the toilets there, which is that they take a while to refill after a flush. We slept on the bus ride, but also tried to listen to our tour guide as he talked about Ireland. He said that a lot of people emigrated during the famine, and a lot that tried died on ships, which were called coffin ships. We went up into a lookout tower at the Cliffs of Moher. The heights thing didn’t freak me out as much as I had thought it would . We wanted to see unpopular opinion puffin while we were at the Cliffs, but we suspect we may have been out of season for him. I mailed Nelly our first post card from Ireland. We bought it at the Cliffs and it cost 1 euro to mail. The bus driver had crazy skills driving on the narrow roads in the country. It is really something passing an on coming bus. When we came back, we stopped at a bar (Sin E) to listen to some locals play Irish music. There were more air instruments than there were last night, and the clientele was a bit older. So far my favorite beer has been Guiness, I think I’ve tried all the stouts I’ve seen here so far – 6 maybe? It seemed like the musicians were playing for drinks. I saw a store that sells seeds and vapes, we might stop there tomorrow just to see the inside. Next door is a kabob place that sells a kabob that Linda said tastes lik a Gyro, but every time she said that I thought she was saying Euro. It’s interesting seeing how different the cars are here. Some have the same name but they look a little or very different. Not many SUVs which I expected. We had fish and chips for dinner as well as chicken pita, which seemed a bit like a burger. The fish and chips was good but I asked for vinegar, whih Linda didn’t like. It came with spicey mashed peas which were good too. We’re going to go out to a beer bar with a lot of international bottles tonight still. We bought a ouple Lycamobile sims yesterday, I’m still trying to get our cell phones to work. We also saw Bunratty Castle on our way back from the Cliffs, but we didn’t go inside.

So, we went out to a couple more bars before calling it a night. First, we went to a beer bar called The Bierhaus. They had better taps than anywhere else, but only 6-10 that were different than other places. We had a couple stouts, one was XXXX, one that was a chocolate milk stout, and I think one was a black stout. We also had a Scottish Independence Ale, which was from an Irish brewery. The barkeep said we’d have to go to larger pubs in the city center if we wanted to keep drinking, so we walked down there. Linda didn’t let me go to a club because I was too scrubby, but we went next door to one. There was quite a different crowd there. We saw a guy and girl who are definitely going to bang tonight. We had an alcoholic ginger beer from England as well as a red that was on tap. We stopped at an Irish restaurant on our way home called Mac-Donald’s for a large fries. They didn’t give us much ketchup and we should have asked for salt.