We had set not one, not two, not three ... but five alarms to wake us this morning in time for our flight to Budapest. We were due to leave Heathrow on the 7,50 am flight, and working backwards from there, 5.5o am at the airport, and an hour and fifteen minutes from Bloomsbury - but give a bit of extra time in case there was any kind of traffic, or hold-up, which had us checked out of the hotel and in the Bolt by 4 am. It was lovely we had such a great run out to Heathrow (25 mins) but then we had almost an extra hour to while away at the airport.
It was an easy check-in process - the staff have obviously seen it all before including two inexperienced not-very-well rested Australians trying to work out what to do next. I hadn't realised that British Airways (and probably not just them) don't post the flight's gate number until the flight opens for boarding. Given the furtherest gate was about 20 minute's walk away, I realised I preferred to have as much notice as possible. The BA app wasn't very helpful. The TripIt Pro app though paid for itself by letting us know an hour before the gate opened which one it would be, so we had plenty of time to get there. What I also hadn't realised was that there are no coffee shops or other amenities near the gates - although there are toilet facilities every few gates. The flight left on time but we arrived into Budapest 20 minutes early, and had a good run through customs, sailing through the 'nothing to declare' line even though we hadn't even see the sign (as we realised later) saying what should be declared. Zoltan, our transfer driver, arrived soon after we called to let him know we had touched down, and then we were off to Budapest proper. Who knew they drive on the other side of the road here. Or that there would be so many signs in Hungarian. Sooz reckons there is no other language like Hungarian and it's quite complex - and certainly my Samsung phone does not have Hungarian as one of the download language modules. Google Translate does have an English-Hungarian option so we will have that to fall back on if needed. At the Hotel, our room wasn't quite ready so we did a preliminary check-in. M, who is sharing our room with us at the Hotel, wasn't due in from Istanbul for a couple of hours, so we had time to relax and have lunch. We had not long finished when she arrived and after check-in was finished, Sooz stayed in the room to have a nap (we had been up since 3am) and I went off to walk across the Chain Bridge and take some photographs while M went off exploring in another direction, I suspect to check out where the nearest cafes are and which are the best.
On my way to and from and across the Chain Bridge, I noticed some Viking long boats - not ours though because that's further up (or down) the river, as sighted by M and Vi on their way in from the airport. We wandered along the street outside of the hotel to get some dinner. I had the 'Traditional Hungarian Goulash': I'm still wondering about the inclusion of the words 'traditional' and 'Hungarian' in the name. The 'goulash' I understand. Sooz and I then shared the Hungarian trifle, which wasn't bad, nothing like either of us has ever had before, but not unpleasant - okay, it was good. The thing I've noticed about Hungary, having eaten here twice now, is that the service is incredibly slow. Yes, that may just have been something about the two places where we've been, but I somehow don't think so. Is it possible that all of Hungary moves at a slower pace of life? We still have time to find out. And we still have time to enjoy the view over the Danube from our window. It is magnificent and despite being very tired (did I mention we had an early start?) I just wanted to keep looking out the window all night. Fatigue finally prevailed, though, and almost the last thing I did was to take a video of the view out the window and post it on FaceBook for others to enjoy too.
