Destination: Budapest
Posted by stephen on Sunday, 02nd April, 2006 @ 16:36
My first impressions of Budapest have been great. It's such a laid back and relaxed place, it really doesn't feel like I'm in a capital city only a few hundred metres from Parliament no less! Well, it didn't feel like that until this afternoon, but I'll get to that in another post.
Last night we arrived to Nicola's beautiful apartment and then went and had dinner at Pizza Marazano, which is in fact Pizza Express. Not very adventurous, I know, but we'll get to that later in the week.
We then wondered down to the Metro station next to Parliament so we could make our way to meet Richard's friend Kati in Buda. It's amazing how quiet the centre of the city is on a Saturday evening. Even the Metro was a little bit of a ghost town. A far cry from London!
Bizarrely the Metro doesn't inform you how long you have to wait until the next train, instead preferring to offer the amount of time that's passed since the last train went. I imagine it's an easier value to calculate!
We arrived in Buda to visit a pub in the centre of a large shopping centre! Not some chain affair, at least not that a know of, but a cool little pub with live music and a massive queue to get in (fortunately we'd arrived suitably early). We met up with the lovely Kati and her boyfriend and eventually moved on to a club. Which was a couple of floors up in the same shopping centre!
Confronted by another massive queue we wandered to the front and Kati's boyfriend flashed some card and in we went as VIPs! And through the club we wondered to the corner to the little VIP area with comfy sofas and decent access to the bar. All very cool. And pretty good going for a first time tourist! It's not what you know, etc...
A little while and several drinks later and Richard and I ended up 'dancing' frantically to lots of 80s English music we knew very well. Anyone who knows me well knows I'm not really the clubbing type, but this place was pretty friendly and chilled even though it was packed.
And of course I was sufficiently drunk to 'dance' my little heart out. I continually quote 'dance' because my version of said skill is somewhat lacking. I think I've prematurely developed the dad dance.
Afterwards, as the Metro had closed many hours earlier, a drunken stumble around eventually found us the river and from there we found a bridge and made our way back to the flat.
