Budapest

Last day with Joel. He is going to a hotel tonight as his flight to Barcelona is at 6:15 tomorrow AM. Off we went to see the Parliament buildings. On the banks of the Danube and a huge complex. All lit up at night and quite a sight. Hungary is a parliamentary representative democratic republic with a president (largely ceremonial) and a prime minister who runs the government. We saw the guards of the buildings do their stately "walkaround" - apparently q15 minutes. Then off to Margaret Island, a large island in the Danube which is totally pedestrian (except for bus service and service deliveries) about 2 miles long and maybe a half mile across. The entire island is a park - a beautiful place to walk and look at the attractions. The best was a "musical fountain" where a large fountain with many spouts "dances" to classical music. It was great. Also a lovely Japanese garden, an athletic field, quite a few cafes, a hotel but most of all lots of green grass and lovely big green trees. Quite a find. We spent several hours there including lunch at one of the cafes. (Kolbasa for Kay - very good.) Then back to apartment for Joel to pick up his gear and go to check into his hotel. Kay found the local TI and got literature for what to do the next 3 days as well as schedules for the nightly music venues.

Our host had told us about a couple restaurants and after checking out several, we chose the Menza for our last dinner together. It was excellent. Duck liver on mashed potatoes with a cherry sauce for Kay with ratatouille with egg as an appetizer. A real Hungarian dinner and it was terrific. Chocolate cake (think warm lava cake) with pistachio ice cream for desert.

End of dinner was punctuated by a brief but impressive thundershower - it really poured for about 15 minutes. We huddled up under the blankets provided by the restaurant while we finished our wine. The the sun came out at 7PM !! Said goodby to Joel and did some necessities shopping on the way home and back to apartment for the rest of the evening.

Miles: 7.7Read more