Meet The Parents

My parents arrived with me in Budapest on Friday evening. We cabbed it from the airport to the hotel, the Marriott Millennium Court Executive Apartments. We had a two bedroom suite for the weekend, which worked out well. The middle room felt like a wedding hospitality suite as my parents brought a ton of snacks with them and I had a bag full of goodies that our super cool friends Josh and Libby left for me at the hotel in Austin.

In an effort to get acclimated to the time zone, we walked around a good bit Friday evening. We strolled along the shore of the Danube and across the Chain bridge. We walked over to dinner at Fausto’s, which Frommer’s calls the best Italian restaurant in the city. We had a good meal. My dad and I both had wild mushroom lasagna. Jenn had pasta (can’t remember which kind), and Mom had salmon tortellini. Everything was very good.

As much as I travel, I still do not handle jet lag very well. It often takes me over a week to adjust. On Saturday morning, I awoke at 3:45 and was up for several hours before getting back to sleep. We ended up sleeping until 11. My parents were already up and ready to go, but didn’t wake us, since they were trying to let us get our rest.
We got going though and went over to the Central Market. It was a nice building and the market was fine, but not any better than anything we’d seen in other cities.

From there, we stopped at the Parliament Building to purchase tour tickets. Unfortunately, they were sold out for the day. A guy selling tours offered us tickets to a “private tour” if we were interested. We skeptically signed up, though we all feared getting ripped off. It ended up working out just fine, but I do wish we lived in a world where tourists didn’t have to worry about getting taken advantage of. It would really be nice if we all could try to help one another rather than trying to profit and capitalize on the vulnerability of others. Life really would be a whole lot easier.
The only place we could find for a quick lunch since we were trying to get back to Parliament for our tour was Subway. In case you are wondering, it does taste exactly the same as in the US.

We walked by the Holocaust memorial behind the Parliament building right next to the river. It is a row of shoes to signify the Jews who were lined up along the Danube, shot, and pushed into the river. It was simple, tastefully done, and extremely moving.

The tour of Parliament was really interesting, but the building itself is what is worth the price of admission. It’s like walking through a palace.

After a hike up to the top of St Stephen’s Basilica, we took a well deserved break at Café Gerbaud, which my parents really enjoyed. They had coffee and we had hot chocolate. We also shared a slice of apple cake, dobos torte, and cream cake. All were good, but I liked the cream cake the best.

Before dinner, Jenn worked, Mom walked around the shopping area on her own, and Papa and I took the funicular up to Buda Castle and walked around the castle district. It was as I remembered when Jenn and I were there a few years ago. The views were great, but besides that, there wasn’t much more to see.

Dinner was at M, which is a place about which we had heard and read a whole lot. The menu was limited, but everything we ate was pretty good. The restaurant is small, so we felt like we were a part of the birthday party going on in the room next to us. It turns out it was for a famous Hungarian singer. It reminded me of the rehearsal dinner in the movie with Anne Hathaway where she’s the screwed up singer because each person at the table sang a song for her. I can’t remember the name of that movie. The memorable part of dinner though was the chocolate fondant for dessert. It was the best dessert we’ve had since we arrived in Europe and dare I say, one of the best chocolate desserts we’ve ever had. Big words...

It was an exhausting day, but we had great weather and saw a good amount of the center part of the city. Budapest grows on me more with each visit there.

On Budapest day 2, we got our Jewish on with a walk through the old Jewish ghetto and a visit to the Dohany Street Synagogue. This was the same synagogue we attended for Yom Kippur services. It’s still beautiful.

After a lunch near the synagogue at the Carmel kosher restaurant, we hopped on a train and headed back to cold and rainy Bratislava. We got my parents settled in at the apartment, walked around a little in the old town, and had a nice dinner at Prasna Basta, which we all enjoyed.

It is fun playing host and tour guide, but also exhausting. It’s great to have Mom and Pa here.