Saturday 9th

The backblips continue…

Our friends S & J collected us around 10 to drive to Heathrow to catch our flight to Budapest.  A trip that we had originally planned to go during the first lockdown.  A couple of months ago BA contacted us (well S as he does all the bookings) to say we would now be flying out with Finair at a later time to the one we had booked. At least it wasn’t cancelled.  

We left the car in the meet and greet area and booked in our luggage without any problem.  However, we then had to join a queue for security. Those snake lines of people that you see on the news were a reality.  One and a half hours of standing/shuffling to get through. Oh, and our flight had been delayed too.

We were met by a lovely young man at the airport to take us to our hotel.  Incredibly chatty and suggesting places to visit.  Talking about the history of Hungary we asked if they sympathised with Ukraine. No, was the answer….. if my interpretation is correct he said due to the world war and boundary changes there were a lot of Hungarians , trapped at the time, in Ukraine which they then made their home. In 2014 the then Ukrainian president decided he didn’t want Hungarians in his country and made life for them unbearable with violence or setting homes alight.  He said the current war is wrong but the Ukrainians are not innocent in what is happening.  Interesting to hear a different perspective to one we hear at home.

At the hotel it was a quick change before going out for dinner, suggested by the hotel.  We had a lovely meal with great music from this quartet, the chap you can’t see very well is playing a cimbalom, a stringed instrument that is hit with little beaters. Great sound. They were very entertaining and when they asked where we were from and when London was the reply he started playing Roll out the barrel  :-D

We stopped at a little quirky bar on the walk back (extras) . Spot the couple sitting in half a bath each.