Budapest

Budaest here we come. After the redeye from Chicago, we had 5 hours to veg in Munich airports utilitarian modern decor. The stiff atmosphere was softened by Lufthansa’s free expresso machines for all passengers. Finally arriving in Budapest, we didn’t want to to too much farther , so we picked a small town west of Budepest to stop on our way to Prague. First things first though, we stopped at an ATM and got some Hungarian Forints. Second , the car rental place left us without much

gas and 140,000 Forints later, I was in sticker shock. Not quite sure how much that is yet, but is just seems EXCESSIVE.

Grof Cziraky Panzio

The town we picked for the night was called Gyor with two dots over the “O”. After figuring out how to get past the barriers to the town square we arrived at the Gyor Panzio. The coolest hotel tucked between ancient buildings, and exuding old world charm. Aniko (sp?) cheerfully led us throught the gauntlet of gates to park the car. After settling into our nicely updated room, with firm comfortable bed, we we wandered around looking for food and finally settled on an open air restaurant and had some traditional goulash soup and crowned it with fabulous creamy gelato. Maybe it is the European atmosphere, but I SWEAR I have never had gelato as flavorful and creamy in the U.S. Breakfast was included in our VERY REASONABLE hotel rate and was the traditional hungarian choices of cold meats, cheeses, boiled egg, musli, yogurt etc. Coffee was very good (could have been hotter) and we were on our way very happy with our choice of accommodation.

Budapest -Prague Road Trip- Day Two

Well, if you want to know the most circuitous and painful route from Gyor to Prague, we have scouted it out for you. Which leads to Jameson’s new rule of GPS use:

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER go without a good map to supplement your GPS.

Things went well for a while we decided to stop in Vienna for a coffee and to pick up a few lunch supplies. That was fine. Found the city center, visited a market and a bakery , had a nice coffee and headed north. After that we were pretty much quasi lost for most of the day. We were heading in the general right direction, but inconvenients side roads finally gave way to expressway….. which stopped dead with traffic for no apparent reason. We finally rolled into Prague at 5:30 and to give the GPS credit, it did get us right to our hotel. We did well with the Police stop , alcohol breath test (no, it wasn’t provoked and the level was zero) and finally inspection by a second police stop under the hood and in the trunk. Turns out that was because our hotel was up the street from the U.S. Embassy in Prague. Gotta go to bed. Will describe the evening of day two and all of day three in the next post.