Today is our last day in Budapest. This city is right there at the top, with Paris and Venice. Perhaps Istanbul is, as well. So we have a busy day today. We slept in until 7, got up for the usual breakfast, and we are going to head to the big indoor, three story market. Then a soak & sauna at Gellért Baths, clean up and catch the metro to the west train station where there is a big mall of regular stores for Gail. Lunch back in the Oscar Wilde Piazza by Octogon (we sure like this part of town) wander the streets and parks before a walk to the old New York Building with the famous café for coffee or wine, depending on the weather. Eventually we will grab some food from the market and head up to our patio to eat and drink the evening away looking over our small part of the world. That is the plan, at least.
•Breakfast - right now. Check.
•market - Bummer. Closed (Sunday), but peering through the windows it would have been cool.
•Baths - check. Gellêrt baths were different than the other baths. More elegant, but smaller. Only a few indoor warm pools, a nice lap pool, and a big outdoor pool with a wave machine (waves for 10 minutes, once an hour) and huge deck with lots of sun chairs. So we sat in warm water, rode the waves, then napped in the sun. Nice.
•Lunch at Oktogon. Check. It was 14:30 before we were done with the baths, so we decided to stop and eat before traveling on to the mall. We went back to the Liszt Ferenc Ter (square) to a little cafe in the back we saw the other day, called Café Vian, a French Bistro type place. What impressed us was that it was filled in the dead part of the day, while every other café was empty. I ordered two great sounding things, tortellini stuffed with spinach and ricotta cheese with lemony pesto olive oil, and roasted duck Vian style with grilled goose liver, ratatouille and potato pancake. My mouth is watering just writing it down.
Gail ordered a Tuscan vegetarian plate. Once again, I thank god I am not a vegetarian.
Litre of cold San Pellegrino sparkling water, bottle of house red (they are out so we are upgraded to Villáni Portugieser 2011 which is very smooth and very tasteful). Well, the food is even better than the description, and with the wine it is again one of those meals I wish would never end.
I had a dessert (I never have dessert) of traditional Hungarian Somoer sponge cake. It was good too.
•Mall. Check. We walked a kilometer or two west to the West Train Station (a beautiful building in itself) to find the west side shopping mall, three stories of retail heaven, Starbucks (our first one in a while) all the local stores like DM, Pepe Jeans, Bershka, etc. It was really cloudy and dark on the way over, about 18:00 in the afternoon. Might be time for the evening rain, so maybe we will stay in a little while. Gail has a good time shopping, and I am thinking we could easily spend another couple days in Budapest. There is so much we didn't see... we could easily keep this trip going through Christmas.
So, the last thing we wanted to do was go to this famous café, called the New York. Back in the 1800s an insurance company (of course, using whose money?) built this hugely extravagant building, and insisted that it have a café, which soon became THE PLACE for the writers and artists. We saw a photo of it and it looked like a library, kind of a bohemian vibe, so we wanted to find it and have a cup of coffee.
Boy, can photos lie! It was the most ostentatious place, so totally overdone and gilded, and the prices were outrageous. Water at $6US a bottle... Anyway we were here to see it, and I decided to have a chocolate shake. I couldn't even drink it, it was so bad. Like chocolate colored sawdust mixed into a thick, watery paste. Even McDonalds has a better shake and that isn't saying much. So, Budapest insider tip #2: do not go to the New York Café to eat. Really, I was not all that impressed with the exterior either, except for the devil type torch-carrying guys.
Disgusted, we went back home to our little patio, opened our bottle of wine and sat out and enjoyed the evening.