FlashBack Friday: Picture Window

Time passes so quickly; what seemed like only a year or so again suddenly turns out to be six years ago!

It's been quite cold today and when it's like this it makes me want to get away from it all. Three years ago, we'd have booked a European city weekend break and popped off to somewhere warmer and slightly less monotone in colour. Nowadays, that's not so easy with a nearly two year old to consider. On top of the financial aspect, there's the point that I've always maintained that I won't take a young child on a plane; it's a personal thing. So we have made a decision to spend our holidays for the forseeable future in Britain, holidays will happen via a car.

Six years ago, we decided to break from our traditional haunts of Prague and Barcelona and try out Budapest.

We landed at the airport and caught the bus into town, something that we'd done every time in Prague with no problem. Slightly different kettle of fish in Budapest. We had to then catch a train in from the bus station to the centre of the city, struggled up the stairs and almost died straight away from carbon monoxide poisoning from the pollution. On the map, out hotel was a short walk. In reality it took us an hour. With a suitcase. And the temperature decided to rise steeply.

We'd decided on a romantic hotel on Margarite Island in the middle of the Danube. We couldn't catch a taxi to the hotel because no taxis are allowed on the island, so even once we'd got to the right bridge, we then had to walk more than a mile up to our hotel and by then we wanted to go home already. We checked into the hotel, eventually, and went and collapsed in out very expensive hotel room. Which had red ants crawling up the walls.

That night we went in search of a meal in the city centre. This was no mean feat as I am vegetarian and this is goulash country. Finally we found a hotel which had a nice restaurance attached. We ordered some soup to start which turned out to be quite frankly the most disgusting thing I have ever tasted bar none. It was a gazpacho soup and the best way I can describe it is an alcoholic cold condensed milk. Neither of us ate it, instead we gorged ourselves on bread rolls.

The next day we managed to stock up at breakfast time and find a McDonald's for lunch. I had fries because they didn't do veggie burgers. In the afternoon we hired a golf cart, I was a little concerned handing over my passport as a deposit but hey-ho, and drove around Margarite Island. We ended up driving down a path alongside the Danube, and suddenly noticed that the path was tapering in and we were running out of available driving area. This is where hubby executed a 23-point turn alongside a rushing River Danube trying to avoid the joggers and not fall in to a river which is certainly not blue!

All in all, we had a rubbish time in Budapest and I went home starving. This photograph looks wistful and picturesque but belies the fact that there's also bugger-all to do there. Not a place I'd personally recommend.

But at least now we can laugh about the tip-top soup!

—

Please visit the other entries over at CafeBebe