Mary slows the ageing process...

... and Brian misplaces a decimal point. 25 August, and it's Mary's birthday. Flying westwards slows the clocks down, which means that her birthday has been delayed by a few hours. Does it mean that we can slow the entire ageing process? Here's hoping.
A leisurely three hours' wait in Dubai sounds pretty good - plenty of time to get from A to B - except when A and B are at opposite ends of this vast airport hub. After disembarking, we decided to head towards the departure gate for our Budapest flight. The signs indicated a 19 minute walk, which was fine. What they didn't state was that additional to those 19 minutes were (literally) four separate rides in passenger lifts and a ten minute train ride. We seemed to have crossed at least four countries and three time zones to reach the departure gate. We hadn't realised that Dubai, let alone its airport, was such a big place. The flight was duly called and we then climbed aboard a bus on the tarmac which eventually delivered us to our plane. That bus trip took a good 15 minutes, and we swear that after experiencing the Grand Tour of Dubai, our plane was parked next to the one on which we'd arrived three hours earlier.

The six hour flight was smooth and uneventful, and we arrived at Budapest airport on time. Proud of his forward planning, Brian had already worked out the exchange rate, that 200 Hungarian forint = $AUD1. He duly withdrew cash at an airport ATM to cover the next 2-3 days, and was presented with a great wad of notes of various denominations, all with large numbers of zeroes. Given that a forint is worth about 0.5 cents, this is hardly surprising. Blame it on the jet lag, but Brian had miscalculated by a factor of ten. What we'd drawn from the machine was enough money to feed an African village for a year or to buy a small car. Oh well...

Brian's cousin Anna (Panni) is a paediatrician and was at a medical conference for the day, so she'd arranged for a kind neighbour to let us into her apartment, where we were due to stay. By way of background, the apartment has been in the family since the early 1930s, and we're pretty sure that Brian's parents had stayed there in the early 1930s as newlyweds for a short time. The two of us, with Julie, had also stayed there when we drove across Europe from the UK back in 1974. It's in a great spot, overlooking a park about 100m from the Danube and just a short stroll from the spectacular Parliament House. We'd remembered it as a very spacious apartment.

When we arrived, we saw that Panni had gone to a lot of trouble to rearrange things to accommodate us, but we saw also that it was a huge inconvenience for her, and would be fairly difficult for us as well in terms of space and storage. While we felt bad about it, we decided to suggest to Panni that it would be better all round if we found a hotel nearby. It would be easier for her and easier for us.

Panni arrived home, and it was really great to see her after so many years. We then set about finding a hotel. To cut a long story short, we finished up on a boat, the Grand Jules, one of several which are permanently moored and which have been converted to hotels. It's on the Buda side, next to the Margaret Bridge, so is in a very convenient location. Our room (cabin?) was very comfortable. After driving over there with Panni and checking in, we returned to the apartment, where we chatted until quite late.

We then ambled back across the bridge towards our accommodation, during which we were able to see one of the most spectacular night-time sights - the Parliament House, the Fishermens Bastion and other major buildings and bridges all brilliantly floodlit. It's really quite something.Read more