At long last, we are on our trip to Central Europe. This trip has been 6 years in the making, just getting delayed for various events (e.g., weddings, Covid, money). And even though it is still kind of terrible timing for work and personal reasons, we are just big fat doing it anyway. “We” is me and Nick, my husband. We are in our 50’s. This is my third trip to Europe (Spain and Italy previously), and his third too (Viking cruise with family along the Rhine, Spain with me).
Our itinerary is 4N Budapest 2N Gyor 4N Vienna 3N Prague. Here is the report of our adventure so far!
N1 Trip from Denver, CO to Budapest. The flight over was thankfully uneventful. We flew British Airways, a 9-hour flight, and had a 3-hour layover at Heathrow. Getting from terminal 5 to terminal 3 for connections to other countries was easy to follow. We have carry-on only bags but still needed to go through security again. Both of our bags were sent for a second screening. For mine, the agent asked that I show him my toiletries…he grabbed the travel size bottle of Listerine mouthwash, which still had the security seal intact, and put it into what looked like a microwave. After that device determined the mouthwash was safe, he handed it back and I was on my way. For Nick, the lady just told him to take his bag without any further inspection. When we went to board for our flight to Budapest, the check-in agent made a big show of how they may not be accepting carryon bags anymore, especially our VERY large US carry-on bags. Haha, I get it. The UK carry-on sized luggage looks tiny compared to ours, like what Frodo and Sam were carrying to Mordor. But we're from Colorado and I'm proud I'm doing 2 weeks with a 22-inch roller bag, thank you very much. Haha And there was plenty of overhead space left too.
After arriving in Budapest, getting through passport control was fairly quick. Lot of people in line were asking each other which river cruise they were going on. One day maybe I’d like to try one. But for now, we just said we are going it on our own. We were pretty wiped out from the flights over, so I knew we would just take a taxi from the airport to the city. Super easy to follow signs for “FoTaxi,” exit the airport and the taxi stand is right there. There was also an ATM, so I took out just a little money, 15,000HUF, which is about $40USD just in case I needed some local currency. Showed the address to our apartment to the nice man at the taxi stand, who estimated our cost to be about $35USD. The taxi drove up within 2 minutes and we were off. Classic rock is a big thing in taxis here. We started with Scorpions “Still Loving You,” but it didn’t stop there for the 30-minute ride. Taxis take credit cards, no problem. The cost is not set however, it is a metered taxi.
Our apartment is in District VII, right across from the Zeneakademia which appears to be a music academy and concert hall. I didn’t plan this, but it has been fun to hear people playing flutes and piano from their open windows across the street and learning about Franz Liszt. There are several restaurants on the street and while they seemed pretty touristy, we just didn’t care for being so tired and went to literally the closest one, Korhely Faloda & Daloda. It was about 7pm by this time. I had goulash and what they called gnocchi, which tasted kind of like mac and cheese. It was delicious (although I did just have probably the worst airline food on BA, so…). The local market is called SPAR (they are everywhere) and there was one right down the street, stopped in for some supplies, went back to the apartment and tried to call it a night.