Budapest, Hungary 5/7/17

Today is the day to say goodbye to beautiful Maria Theresa and hello to our apartment near St Stephens Basilica. On our bus tour we passed by the building that we will be staying in, so we know the location. We had breakfast and then lunch waiting for our time to leave. The crowd got smaller and smaller and soon it was just Claudia and Eva and us waiting to depart. Finally 12:30 and our driver arrived. He wisked us off to Livia’s apartment that Ruth found on Air BnB. Livia met us at the door and showed us up to her second floor sweet little apartment. She has it decorated so lovely. We really like the patio overlooking a garden common area. This is what drew us to her apartment and we are glad we chose it. The location can’t be beat. We are right near tons of restaurants in Gozdu Court plus we are really close to Deak Ferenc Ter - the central metro hub. We can catch every line from Deak Ferenc. With our metro passes we can zip all around Buda and Pes

After settling in to our new home for five days, we set out to have a look around. We found a small market and bought some cheese, crackers, yogurt and juice plus a bottle of wine.

Our bounty!

The next item on the day agenda was to meet up with our friends Duff and Connie, who are beginning a cruise up the Danube to Amsterdam tomorrow. We have a day to visit with each other in Budapest. Well, our plan of contacting each other via Whats App, a wifi enabled international texting app did not work out so well. We each received only some of the texts that were sent, so it was impossible to verify a plan. Rick and I waited around the apartment thinking they had gone off to explore. They had headed to St Stephens Basilica thinking we might come by. In the end, we went to their boat on a metro subway car and then a tram. They were sitting outside the ship looking for us. Whew! We walked over towards St Stephens Basilica and had a beer on the pedestrian walkway.

Duff and Connie showed us their Segway friends and gave us their brochure. We might fit that in later. They let us try them out and they are doable, although in traffic it might be hard. We said farewell to Duff and Connie and headed back to our area for dinner. We found a little spot with Hungarian food. Ruth had the Chicken Paprikas (pronounced Paprikash) and Rick tired the delicious Hungarian Goulash soup.