Day 8: First Day as Tourists (Saturday, November 19)

Today was our first real day to be tourists in Budapest and we needed to make a plan! I had called a family meeting for 9 am but pushed it to 10 when I finally fell asleep at 1:30 am. We woke to blue skies and had a breakfast of yogurt and blueberries (the buckets of blueberries have been so phenomenal!), but didn’t leave the house until noon.

We walked to the 2M and took the tram around the outside of the Parliament building to see the statue of Gyula Andrassy and the memorial Shoes on the Danube Bank which remembers an incident where Jews had been walked to the edge of the river and shot during WWII. We were last in Budapest six years ago and a lot has changed politically in the country; evidence of that is that a statue of Imre Nagy, a pro-reform communist, that had been overlooking Parliament (keeping his eye on it) had been relocated to another area of town, close to where we had caught the tram.

We kept walking down the river to where the Chain Bridge is, but it is closed for construction. We had been told by several people that the Four Seasons was not to be missed so we walked inside the retro art deco building to see if we could get a reservation for tea later that day (we couldn't). We used their beautiful bathroom and while it had occurred to me that we were out of toilet paper in our apartment and I could take some from their well-stocked supplies, it hadn't occurred to me to actually do it. So, I was a little surprised when Rachel exited the bathroom with an extra roll in hand. We did need it though, so I didn't make her put it back.

We were so lucky the Christmas markets opened this weekend while we were in town! One stretched from right outside the Four Seasons up to the Basilica. We started off strong at the first stall with mulled wine and kept going with our first (but not our last) chimney cake, hot apple cider (the perfect drink for the day), hot chocolate (another perfect drink for the day!), a cabbage and a cherry strudel (Jim was a little skeptical about the cabbage but he and Rachel liked it), roasted chestnuts, and lángos but with potato latkes, not just dough this time.

From there we took Rick Steve's walk up Andrássy Ut (stopping at the Opera House and a cool bookstore) and walked past the Academy of Music that Rachel wanted to see and a statue of Franz Litz playing the piano wildly.

We ended our walk with high tea at the other must-visit tea place in town: the New York Cafe. It is dubbed the fanciest cafe in the world, and it was pretty fancy. There was also a half-hour wait outside in the cold, but we decided it might be worth it. I'd say it was. It didn't have total charm, and it is so touristy it felt a little like Disneyland, something manufactured.

From there, we all went to Rachel's apartment, so Jim and Julia could finally see it. And, then we hit a second Christmas Market for more hot apple cider -- it was cold walking around! We didn't buy much but we did find a beautiful scarf for Sarah and took a picture with the artist weaver himself (a little pompous, but talented).

I'd made dinner reservations at Bombay Budapest, and we had a lovely Indian dinner right near the Four Seasons which put us in striking distance of the first Christmas Market for yet another chimney cake and hot chocolate afterward. We took a taxi home, exhausted.