Day two in Budapest

---

Greetings all,

We planned on starting today off early, but we didn't get out until somewhere around 9:30-10:00.

We headed up the road to the Market place. It's inside and is really neat. The first floor is all food- fruits and vegetables, meats, pastries, desserts, spices, all that stuff. It was really neat. Some people were selling pigs feet and chicken feet. We also saw a whole plucked chicken. There were also some interesting pig heads. Except they weren't whole pig heads. They were cut in half. Down the the middle. It was weird. There was also like.. preserved pig face. Just the skin or something off of it's face. There was lots of paprika. The dessert places looked really yummy. Upstairs was like, souvenirs and clothing. Novelties and things. There was a lot of stuff up there. They all had very similar things. I wanted some earrings but they just looked like junky earrings you could get anywhere. Not nice handmade ones or anything. I did get a fews things, like a cool little chess/checkers/backgammon board, and little wooden painted egg. Evan got one of those dolls that you open up and there are more dolls inside.

After that we came back to drop our stuff off at the hostel and went out for lunch. We first tried a place called Red Cafe, but the service was horrible. The guy sat us down, and gave us menus. Then we sat there forever, and no one came to talk our order or anything. Not even drinks.I got fed up and left. Then we tired some other place and the service was much better. I had ham and bean soup and Evan had the spicy goulash. The ham in my was really fattty and kind of yucky though.. And it was a little too spicy. I don't think I like paprika as much as the Hungarians. I wanted cake with pistachio ice cream but they were out. Me and Evan got Hungarian golden dumplings with vanilla sauce instead. They were pretty tasty.

After we ate, we made our way up to the great Synagogue/Jewish Museum/Memorial garden. It was pretty cool. The synagogue was gorgeous. The memorial garden was part of the ghetto they put the Jewish people in during World War two. After they freed the peope from the ghetto, they found lots of bodies in the streets that had died from cold or starvation etc. Its really sad. They put two thousand of the people in this garden place in some mass graves and made it nice. Now there are trees and things and plaques for the people who were identified and a memorial for all who died. It was neato.

We still had some time after all of that and went for a walk around Pest. It was neat and we saw lots of pretty things. Cool squares and whatnot. We walked along the river a lot and it was really pretty with the sun going down over Buda. We could see really nice building from the castle district over there- we're going to go there some day this week!

Over all a successful day! Lots and lots of walking so I'm quite tired. It was good though. It was supposed to rain but it only sprinkled in the morning, and then it got sunny! I'm not sure what we're going to do tomorrow. It's a national holiday so I don't know what's going to be open and such. We'll have to ask somebody. We haven't had supper yet, and I don't know what we're going to eat. I'm not really really another Hungarian culinary experience just yet so maybe just fast food. Eeps.

Well, wish us luck! Talk to you tomorrow.

Cheers
Beth

---

Comments

[Donna OBrien]

The market sounds like a really neat place - expect for the pig stuff, I think I could live without that. I'm looking forward to seeing pictures, especially of the synagogue trip. Glad you are enjoying yourselves. You need to be a bit more adventurous, food wise, I mean. Look forward to reading tomorrow's blog. Love you x0x0x0x0x

[Corinne Peters]

Sun
Glad the weather was good for you. Sounds like a beautiful place!