Friday: October 11
Budapest Hungary, A Long Walk
Last night I slept OK, but not great. I seem to be over the worst
of the cold, but I’m still on the cusp of getting my dreaded hacking chronic
cough.
Today’s weather was what I had been hoping would be the norm for
this trip, and what would have been ideal yesterday for biking. It was warm and
sunny. I wore my orange fleece shirt, and I brought my vest, but never used it.
My shirt was a little cool in the shade, and a little warm in the sun. It would
have been ideal for biking.
We wanted to see the entrance to Budapest, so Amy grabbed a table
in the Aquavit terrace. I got a plate of food in the dining room (my last omelet
for this trip). I brought the plate up and ate it on the terrace. I finished
eating just as we were coming up to Budapest. I didn’t have time to run back to
the room and grab my vest, so I just went up, was a little cool, and took a
bunch of pictures as we came in to dock. Then we went down, got ready, and did
the panoramic tour.
I didn’t take as many pictures as I might have, as a lot would
have been redundant with pictures from our first cruise.
We ended the tour inside the church. Then we had 50 minutes of
free time. I took some more pictures in the church, and around the Fisherman’s
Bastion area, and then I wandered to the other side of the narrow ridge, where
we would meet the bus. This was more challenging than I expected, as there are
several roads that parallel the wall, but only relatively few that run
perpendicular to the wall. Eventually, I found the wall and then followed it
back to where we would meet the bus.
—
After
lunch,
I wanted to walk up to Marian’s Island and see what
that was about. Amy did that on our first cruise, but I didn’t see it. Amy
wanted to visit the big Jewish Synagogue, but unfortunately today was Yom Kippur,
so it was closed. She ended up joining me
My theory was to go up this side (East) of the river, cross the
Marian Bridge, check out the island, finish crossing, return down the west
side, and return over the chain bridge (where the boat was docked on the east
side). My thinking was that we would be looking across the river at the
parliament building near sunset, so it would be illuminated well.
The island was much bigger than I expected. In round numbers, it
took 45 minutes to walk to the island, 45 minutes to walk to the end of the
island, and equal times to return. Since Amy had already seen the island, she
just hung out at the end of the island and looked at birds and flowers.
The island is bigger than I expected. There are several pool
areas, a soccer field, a Japanese garden, a rose garden, a hotel, and old
church, some other ruins, and a bunch of other stuff. My problem was that by
the time I got to the far end of the island, I was in desperate need for a toilet.
There are plenty of toilets there, but they are pay toilets, and I had no local
currency.
I hurried back to Amy. She was thinking of buying some food (with
US currency), and I thought she might have change in the local currency, but
she paid with a credit card. However, they told her that her receipt was good
for bathroom usage. So I took her receipt, ran off to the nearest “water
closet”, showed the receipt to the woman manning the toilets, she said
essentially OK, so I dashed into the men’s room, and took care of my desperate
business.
My plan half worked. We got opposite the Parliament building just
before sunset, and it was lit well. However, it would have been better if we
had been a half hour or so earlier, because by the time we got to the Chain
Bridge, the sun had set, so the lighting for the Chain Bridge wasn’t ideal.
The program director has told us at the nightly briefing (port
talk) that there were rumors that at 7:20, there was going to be a drone light
show. I checked at 7:24, and I didn’t see anything. However, a few minutes
later, he came on the PA and said that it had started. A bunch of us left the
table (it was in the middle of dinner), ran up to the sun deck and
got some pictures.
The problem was that it was “aimed” at a different stretch of the
river embankment, and some of the graphics were 2D, which we sort of saw edge
on.
Then we went back down and had our final dinner. It is very
strange that tomorrow we are going to leave (we’re leaving at 6:30, but others
are leaving at 3:30am!), and then after a lot of travel hassle, we will be at
home and back to reality.
I am now typing my last report (at least on the boat), sitting on
the bow, enjoying the lit up skyline of Buda.
One strange thing is that over the past few days, probably a half
dozen people have come up to me, asking me what I was doing, as they’ve seen me
typing away every evening in the lounge. Some have been passengers, and some
staff. They were wondering if I was actually doing work from the boat, or if
maybe I was some sort of travel consultant or something. I told all of them
that I’m just writing the day’s events up for fun, to post on my web site just
because.
