More Sightseeing and Hungarian Food

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This morning Mark, Ali and I took a tram across the river to do some sightseeing. We went to Gellert Hill, a historic hill next to the legendary Gellert Hotel. The first stop on the hill was the Cave Church, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's a very strange church build into a cave in the side of the hill. After going in here we got some decent cheese pretzels from a vendor near the church. we continued climbing up the stairs on the hill, stopping at various points for pictures and good views. At the top of Gellert Hill is Liberty Monument, a memory of the Soviet liberation of Hungary from Nazi forces during WWII. So we stopped and got some pictures of that as well as of the views overlooking the city. After going here we hiked back down the other side and walked around the base back to where we started, then headed home. Pictures are on Facebook.

In the afternoon I finally went out and got a membership at a gym by us. It's a little expensive, but it's only a couple blocks down and one street over from our apartment. It's really old school - all the weights and equipment are really old but the place has a good feel to it. It's really casual so you can pretty much just go in and do your thing and not have to worry about much.

But the highlight of today was definitely dinner. Mark found a place on Vaci utca, the big tourist street near us, called Fatal Restaurant (the second "a" is supposed to be accented so it's not like "fatal"). It was pretty reasonable - My huge dinner, a 1/2 liter beer and my part of the service tip came out to about $25. It was neat because "fatal" is the Hungarian word for wooden platter, so all the dishes were served in their pots on a wooden platter. I got a dish which was these small fluffy noodles covered with mushrooms, onions some bacon and a couple peppers. On top of this was a small pile of fried potatoes and a big crispy pork leg still on the bone. It's the first substantial meal I've had since I got here, so I ate nearly all of it despite how huge it was. I would definitely go again, maybe when Ashley, Mom and Gram are here.

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