Budapest -The city of bridges and water

If you are just here for the photos, here they are

We spent the end of April and a chunk of May 2023 in Budapest. A city that is a combination of 3 separate cities. The Danube river runs right through the middle of the town. There are several bridges that cross the river and an island in the center (Margaret Island).

We watched two dogs during our stay. Their person/owner is an Aussie who is working in the UK and has an apartment in the Schengen Visa Area. Lots of spreadsheet juggling to make it legal for her to live in Budapest, but very impressive. The two dogs were very cute and very different. The city really loves its dogs and it shows. There are several dog parks around the city. The city allows dogs on public transit, but you need to pay a full price ticket. We thought that was a little ridiculous, then we remembered the bus costs ~$1.30 USD and we went on our way.

It was nice how many people we could talk to in Budapest. I expect no one to speak English and am always SO impressed at anything someone can say. I got to talk to some very fun people at the dog parks and around town.

We were very close to the largest park in town called City Park. While we were in town we participated in two of the festivals that were going on there. The park was filled with food, drinks, games and rides. We tried Lángos, which is a Hungarian fried bread topped with garlic, sour cream, and cheese.

The city is also well known for board games, specifically chess. While we were there we went to a bar specifically made for playing board games. As you can see from the photo above Randi was very happy to win the first game we played.

On one of our walks around town to see the castle and a giant church. While attempting to cross a street we were stopped by the police. They let us know that we couldn’t cross the road and had to wait. Randi told me she read the Pope might be in town and just like that he drove by and waved at us. No pope mobile, just a friendly wave out the passenger seat of the car.

During our stay Randi made a few trips over to Austria to spend time with her brother and sister-and-law. One was for a bachelorette party, where they went to the western central part of the country. She experienced some really cool hiking and family time. Sadly it rained a bunch of their bachelorette party, but they didn’t let that stop them from hiking.

This was Randi’s second birthday away from Colorado in a row. Last year we were in Germany and had just done a really hard bike ride. This year our host sent her an awesome cake from a local bakery and we did a fun hike where we overlooked the city. We wanted to do a long bike ride together but near her birthday but I got really sick for a few days and sadly couldn’t do the bike ride, but Randi’s brother and SiL came over and they got to go on the bike riding adventure.

In addition to Randi’s family, we also got to visit with a family friend from Denver. We had coffee/brunch followed by a wine bar trip (with perhaps a little bit too much Hungarian wine). It was great catching up with them and talking about their (now adult) daughters and how their lives have changed in the last few years.

We had some great food in Budapest, but we ended up with our second highest food spend in a single month. I guess we were hungry in Hungary. 😂

If you are just here for the photos, here they are

The cover photo is from a tea house that is on the Danube river where we sat, had a few small pots of oolong tea, and talked