The hotel has been impressive. Though situated in a small street off the Danube Promenade, the apartment is spacious, with a non-so-small drawing room and a (big enough) bedroom. The view is nothing great. A tan-colored structure with a few boarded up windows stares at me outside the window. But, on the far right, I can see the tower of the Erszebet Bridge, with the green water of the Danube underneath glowing golden at night. Gellert Hill with its monument is visible next to it. It was raining through the night, blocking out all the noise, but today evening I realized that there was more than one church in the vicinity, and their clock towers were not synchronized!
Right at the corner of the Marriott Millenium, starts Vaci Ut, (made famous by Pragati during my previous trip) the most expensive shopping street in Budapest. I explained to Snag its importance: “In Bangalore, we have Brigade Road and Chickpet. This is like the Brigade Road of Budapest. Everything is expensive”. There were Swedes everywhere, dressed in their football jerseys and chanting the name of Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Today was the day of their World Cup qualifier against the host nation.
No sooner had we reached the Parliament than I started shooting pictures. “Pragati would chide me if she saw this!” I told Snag. “According to her, I have already taken a million photos of this building”. Today, I wanted to attempt to enter the building. There was a small queue, which seemed to put off Snag a bit – there were hardly about 30 people in front of us, but it took us an hour to reach the front of the queue. And to my surprise, it was just a queue to “buy” tickets. We had to return at 3:15 p.m., to enter the building.
I suggested lunch on the Promenade, overlooking the Buda Palace. Snag agreed, but not for walking all the way there. She dragged me on to a tram – the first time I was getting on to one in Budapest. “Why should we walk, when we have the option of a tram?” she quipped. We sat down at one of the roadside cafes outside the Ambassador hotel. There were Swedes here too. Familiar sights greeted me. Across the river stood the grand palace, and as if reaching out to it across the river, spanned the Szechernyi Lanchid. I pointed it out to Snag as the bridge Aishwarya Rai ran across. Further from it, on top of the hill, stretched the Fisherman’s Bastion. The big monstrosity of a shopping mall on Vorosmarty Square had been completed, but the spire of Matthias Church was still under renovation. We spent lunchtime discussing about Verdigris, as I ended up eating half her pizza.
The interior of the parliament was something I had missed on my last trip, and it was worth everything that I paid. The huge corridors were lined with red carpet. The massive arches were painted in gold. The lady guide kept babbling about the history of the building, which seemed nothing much different from the stuff I had already read up on Wikipedia. Hence, I could concentrate on taking photographs.
Before returning to the hotel, Snag wanted to buy milk and sugar, and for that, we combed Vaci Ut. It was like searching for an idli-vada joint on Brigade Road or Forum Mall. The place was again, full of Swedes. She looked at the hawkers selling embroidered cloth.
“I don’t find these tablecloths so good” she remarked.
“But this is the specialty of this place” I said.
“What? Selling not-so-good tablecloth?” she retorted back.
Just when we had given up hope, we found a small shop that ACTUALLY sold milk and sugar. Er…is there really an idli-vada joint on Brigade Road?
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