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Published: July 20th 2018
20180719_104245
selfie at the citadel.Went downstairs to eat breakfast and there were 200 people in line. It pays to be gold. We went back upstairs to the executive lounge and had breakfast there, no wait, good food. After breakfast we went in search of the Viking representative and located them on floor -1. We told them we weren’t going on the included tour since we had done it last year, instead we asked them about the hop on/off tour. He explained we could get the tour along with the optional tour down the side of the mountain (where we were). We choose that option as I was NOT going to hike up and down this mountain.
We met the electric car in old town and enjoyed our ride down the mountain. At the bottom we transferred to the hop on/off bus. We tried to put on our headsets but the hook up did not work, we moved, this one did not work either, we moved, they rebooted the system. Still only half of the units worked and we split up to find seats that worked.
This hop on/off tour needed some improvements – first the headset problem but more importantly the descriptions of
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chain bridge the sites. For example: the building on the left is the opera house. There are 5 buildings on the left that look alike in the middle of a block we are speeding by. There are no signs. So, we saw the opera house, we just aren’t sure which building it was. You may or may not see a picture of the opera house below. We may or may not have seen many other buildings and we almost missed several stops. We are glad we took the Viking tour last year.
One stop we really liked was the Citadel. It had a beautiful view of the river and both Buda and Pest and its own Statue of Liberty. This statue doesn’t look like the one in the US. Another stop we truly enjoyed was the market square. This reminded us of the Spanish Markets we went to in Barcelona and Madrid. The entire first floor was foods of all type, bakeries, vegetables, meats,… The second floor was local crafts and goods. The whole market took up an entire large city block and we probably spent 2 hours there.
Before leaving we decided to indulge ourselves in the pastries we
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view from the citadel
saw when we arrived. We were especially interested in the miniature coconut crème roll. We choose 2 strange small cookies to go with it. While waiting for our bus in the heat of the day, we decided we deserved the delicacy of the crème only to learn that the crème was cheese and the coconut was shredded cheese. It was not even good cheese, it was nasty cheese and we like cheese. Our taste buds and brains were both in shock. Thank gawd for the cookies to cleanse our pallets.
We were now told to get on the green bus, but we have a ticket for the red bus. Red, green same, who cares. Don, you would have been happy. The green bus had the same problems as the red bus. Oh well. We rode for bit then the tour said it ended and we could get on the red bus in front of us. We did until we saw it was packed so we returned to the green bus and waited for it to start up again.
More stops later and we still didn’t know what we were seeing, our stop arrived (unannounced). Luckily I was following
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statue of libery on my GPS (as this bus did have wifi) and I knew we wanted to get off here. We departed and headed out to check out some of the local shops. Nicky, guess what we found – Desigual and they were having a 50% off sale. Guess what we did? Yep, I got a couple cute tops. Wish I had had internet then as I would have txt’d you some pics to see if you wanted anything. Sorry.
Then we needed to take a break. The sign said toilets this way. But they lied. We never found them. We decided to give up and head back up the mountain so we caught the next bus that would take us toward that direction. We then caught the electric car up the hill to old Buda.
What a relief to get back to the old town where it was quiet and old and not a ton of people and not much traffic. We dropped off stuff at the hotel, got some ice water in the executive lounge and then walked thru old town to explore and find where we might want to do dinner.
We went back to the
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hospital in the rock hotel to clean up and then headed to an early dinner. The restaurant had an interior garden where we had a slow relaxing dinner. We then walked thru old town with the evening sun shining on the buildings to get some lovely pictures.
Afterwards we headed to our room for showers and blog work when we learned the AC was not working again. So, we called the front desk and they sent up the maintenance guy to look at it. He came, he laughed, he locked the window and the AC cometh on. We don’t know how the window became unlocked but now we have AC again. Life is good.
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Patty
non-member comment
Paprika Pepper?
They look just like the banana peppers in my garden. Maybe I'll let some on the vine and see if they turn red. Did you see any red paprika peppers?