Budapest, July 23, 2014

Left for Budapest on an early afternoon flight.  We left Paris in a grey mist...rather romantic.  Our route out to CDG once again took us past all the great monuments. By the time the plane took off, the mist had lifted and the skies were brilliant blue.

It was quite hot when we arrived at our apartment at the foot (no. 2) of Andrassy Ut. (Ut means street; Ter means park...and that is all I know in Hungarian!).  We are in the heart of the city and our street is lined with lovely trees.  It is considered the "Champs Élysées" of Budapest, especially as it has many designer shops.  All the great monuments are within walking distance...including the Danube.  Andrassy Ut is a World Heritage Site.

Our landlord, a delightful young man who lived in London for 4 years, met us with his two little boys.  The apartment is on the top floor of an 1880’s building.  The apartments (and offices) are laid out around an open courtyard. We took the wonderful old lift to the 5th floor, walked around the iron-railed balcony to a door which led to a staircase.  We opened a locked grill and went up some more stairs to the apartment.  (We knew about the one flight of stairs.) The apartment is gorgeous. It has been gutted and renovated beautifully...Euro modern.  Lovely pale woods.  No door handles on any cupboards...magnetic latches.  You just press on them and they open.  So you can imagine how sleek everything looks.  It is light and airy...and air-conditioned! The kitchen is state of the art: induction stove, combo microwave/oven, dishwasher....and a nespresso machine.  The latter is what we have been dreaming of!  And it is everything it is advertised to be.....except for the building itself which is undergoing major renovations.  Concrete dust everywhere and some scaffolding.  Doesn't affect us a all, but hard to take any decent photos.  So, once again, I use a stock photo.  The courtyard building walls will be painted yellow once again.  The interior walls a pink.  Yellow is a common color for buildings here.

Building lobby as it will look when work completed. (Photos of apartment to come.)

After a little unpacking, we went to reconnoiter.  Bank on the corner for thousands of forints! ( One dollar is 228 forints.  I cannot do these kind of calculations in my head, so we rely on our calculator app on our smart phones.  And we are not too proud to do it at the table in a restaurant.) Then shopping for milk, seltzer, wine and a few sundries at a little store around the corner.  We then walked up Andrassy to the Opera House and happened upon a restaurant called Callas.  Well, you can see why we went in and had dinner there.

"Old Budapest"....But actually renovated in this Art Deco style in 2006.

The restaurant dates to 1880 when he building was erected.  The location went through various transformations until it reopened as a restaurant in 2000.  They have musicians later in the evening, but we were tired after the day's travel.

The menu included many traditional Hungarian dishes and all local wines.  I had Wiener schnitzel with Bavarian  potato salad.  Well, the schnitzel was more than enough for two.  I could not finish it, but it was delicious.  Ken had duck breast with apples.  He pronounced it delicious also.  Our local wines were excellent.  We loved the ambiance and may come back.