Hotel Balcony, originally uploaded by DSNelson.
For Caz’s birthday this year we took our long-overdue first trip abroad together. Not being the beach-life sun-worshiper type we looked to Budapest in Hungary for a bit of a culture injection. The plans we set in true last-minute style with the Hotel booking confirmed only 2 days prior to arrival and the flights a day earlier, travel lesson number one was learned immediately
As you get closer to your arrival date hotels get cheaper, flights get more expensive
Next time we’ll be booking the flights months in advance and the hotel room when we’ve landed! Fortunately Easyjet provide a very reasonably priced regular service from Luton which we took advantage of, the only problem was getting to Luton. A UK hotel stay and long-term parking was threatening to take a significant chunks out of our budget so we chose to drive to stay at my mum’s in London the night before and take the rapid Thameslink service to the Airport the following morning. The prospect of my first drive through London was not appealing so I put aside my predjudices an bought myself a TomTom One SatNav, relying for the first time not on my manly sense of direction but the soothing calm voice of “Jane” amidst the chaos raining outside in the normal London traffic. An experience I hope will never become my normal for sure..
“You have reached your destination” – Not quite Jane, 900 miles to go.
This was to be my first flight with Easyjet and I was impressed, the outbound flight was fast and efficient and the staff were all smiles and manners. I’m not ashamed to admit it (otherwise I wouldn’t blog it) but I’m not a great air passenger, I shall never be one of the jet-set I accept that. It’s not the crippling kind of flying phobia many have, I can over come it but it’s far from being my favourite situation to be in. Writing this I now have 5 flights under my belt but my mind still darts to the flow of forces around the chassis of the aircraft as the wheels leave the tarmac and wonder how long this elephant of the sky can keep it up! I blame a brief tour of Avro aerodrome in my early teens when the tour guide explained standing in front of the half-built skeleton of an aircraft, how the metal skin was thin as paper to reduce weight, how many common over-engineering corners needed to be cut to make it lighter than air, it doesn’t bare thinking about when you’re sat inside one at 39,000 feet. Happily Easyjet’s shiny new Airbus 319 did manage to keep it in the air as required and I was even able to tear my eyes from the engines long enough to finish reading Stephen Fry’s autobiography “Moab is my Washpot” along the way. I don’t doubt I can credit this to the calm professionalism of the airline and it’s staff.
Upon landing we were picked up from the Airport by Robin who is a friend of my mum’s, a Hungarian-Canadian-Hungarian who runs an Airport transfer company called ‘Fox Transfers’ who has a passing resemblance to a slimmer clean-shaven Chris Moyles. He gave us our first introduction to Hungarian cuisine. He took us to a small family-run restaurant on the out-skirts of Old Buda who (he tells us) close at 5pm as the 85-year-old grandmother-cum-chef needs to rest up for the day. Her dwindling energy can be forgiven as her age and uncommonly extensive experience produced the incredible Chicken and Goose-liver Paprikás that we were both to enjoy immensely. The meal was served with the customary “noodles”, small non-uniform lumps rather than long ramen-style strings, that once mixed with the Paprika sauce (that gives the meal it’s name -duh!) was nothing short of divine. A dish we’ll certainly be attempting to reproduce again but unlikely to ever do it credit. Robin provided us with the local fruity Schnapps and a beer chaser alongside. I find Hungarian beers tend to be a nice blend of the refreshing coolness of our British lagers along with the deeper flavours found in ales, a good mix I reckon. Lesson number two was learned here
Hungarian portions are HUGE!
They are monstrous, if you can even finish the garnish you must be nothing short of starving. We gradually learned to set aside our English ways of clearing the plate, deeply rooted shame tingling away inside but the alternative was hospitalisation through over-feeding. The meal was finished with a traditional Hungarian dessert, a hedgehog-sized ball of rice coated in bread-crumbs topped with sour-cream that goes by the name of Túrógombóc, it was interesting, not like the sweet desserts our tastes are used to an at the end of the meal it was pushing my capacity for food to the limit. Shocked then we were when Robin told us that usually you get two! How your average Hungarian isn’t 35 stone I’ll never know.
To be continued…
