Long Live The Hungarians!

Turns out, having done a bit of research, that my hotel is only on the 7th best pedestrian street in the world!

Breakfast at Gerbeaud Confiserie - apparently famous but I had to ask for the food element of my breakfast, and they had the cheek to charge me for the extra coffee I had to go with said food and 15% service (seems to be standard here). I don't think I'm stingy, I'd generally leave 10-15% (sometimes more), but if you've forgotten to bring half my order why should I pay for the good service I haven't received? I'm English though, so of course I did pay up while muttering all this under my breath....

Didn't let it spoil the morning though. I wandered down Váci Utca, looking in the windows of the hundreds of souvenir shops (from crap and tacky to lovely to prohibitively expensive!), MAC, Estee Lauder, Furla and Claire's Accessories. Called into C&A, but I was the youngest in there by a good 20 years, and at my age that's saying something! I was in the lookout for a cafe called BARbár, where I've read they sell delicious hot chocolate made from real Belgian chocolate! Didn't manage to find it today, but I've a rough idea of where it is so I might look it out tomorrow evening. They also sell Palinka, traditional Hungarian fruit spirits, so I think it would be rude not to try a local speciality. Particularly when it's accompanied by chocolate bonbons :-)

After a beautiful lunch of Hungarian cheeses and fresh lemonade, I wandered over the bridge - don't ask me which one! - and (after a misunderstanding about whether the 500HUF was for entry or an electronic guide that I didn't want...) went to a church inside a cave. It was pretty cool - but actually quite warm. I told you I was coming to warmer climes!

After I much needed lie down in a darkened room, I've been this evening to the Danube Palace to see a Danube Symphony Orchestra cimbalom show. I had a French chap's teenage daughter next to me who was only small but gawd what a fidget-ass! On the other side of me were Americans and Italians behind me. We were indeed a multinational audience!

I loved the performance. There were little comic touches, like the orchestra leaving the stage, one by one, during a piece of music, the last ones shrugging as if to say, well everyone else has gone! The cimbalom looks (I think) like a piano with no lid, and is played with sticks with marshmallows on the end. Again, I can't be sure of this. The lower reaches of its tone would do well as 'dum de dum dum' horror notes, and the higher notes are more chimey. On its own it can sound a bit discordant - when the player (sorry, I don't know the correct term for a cimbalom player!) had finished his solo there was a stunned silence, followed by applause and nervous laughter! It sounds lovely with an orchestra though :-) The only tunes I recognised were the last two - Long Live The Hungarians! (which the orchestra had great fun with) and the Radetzky March - the conductor had us all clapping along (the French teenager enthusiastic but woefully out of time). I really enjoyed myself.

Walked back past St Stephen's Basilica, all lit up, and got chatting to John from Edinburgh (late 50s maybe, going home tomorrow). He offered to buy me a drink, but I told him I had an early start and had to get back to the hotel. Talking to strangers just isn't in my nature, it makes me intensely uncomfortable. Sometimes I am so frustrated by my nature...