Day 7 - Bratislava, Slovakia to Budapest, Hungary - Adventures by Disney Danube River Cruise 2016

We were recommended last night to watch as the Viola pulled into Budapest this morning and that suggestion was a good one – the architecture in Budapest along the river is just beautiful.  Pictures from our state room balcony:

Today's Daily Adventurer:

We headed down to breakfast at around 8 and then headed off the boat for our walking tour of the central market. Our green team guides today were Dean and Daniel who introduced us to our local tour guide, Christina. We didn't walk far to get from the dock to the market.

The market was really neat. We had been to markets like this in Portugal and Spain but this one was particularly nice – wider, cleaner, and with 3 levels: seafood on the lower floor, food items on the main floor, and then souvenirs on the upper floor. Once we crossed through the market, stopping just to get a quick lesson on paprika – the pepper vs powder vs dried paprika, we continued to the opposite end of the market where we were told to meet in about 25 minutes.

The local currency is the Hungarian Forint (HUF) which was about 279 HUF per 1 USD or 311 HUF per 1 Euro. Most of the stalls on the main floor took credit cards except American Express. Most of the stalls upstairs took Euros so we never exchanged for any HUF at the ATM.

We headed upstairs to find ourselves a magnet, country sticker, and t-shirt for Seth. We found a magnet and sticker but then ran out of time and had to meet up with the group downstairs. We decided that we would have to come back to the market later and added a few items to our shopping list: Tokaji, t-shirt, paprika, and salami. Rhys wanted some local ham but I tried some of their hungarian salami which was one of the things they were known for but I was underwhelmed – the salami from 2 different stalls tasted bland to me. One other thing I noticed in a lot of the stalls were these cans of goose liver but I thought they were a bit expensive – about $16 per tin of goose liver with truffle.

We met up and walked to our bus for the drive to Lazar Equestrian Park which took about 45 minutes. The weather was nice today – high 70's – a bit warm in the sun but nice in the shade. On the way, I read up how to buy Tokaji and found out that Hungary is also well known for their goose liver. I was surprised to read that much of the goose liver in France is imported from Hungary. I decided that I was going to need to try it.

When we arrived at the Equestrian Park, we were given some schnapps and bread to try. Neither were my favorite. We were given instructions to explore the park as we wanted and to meet up at the horse show arena at noon. 

We headed over for the cart ride first – we just happened to also have Christina, our tour guide, on this ride and she told us some “gossip” about one of the local heroines – Sisi.

We then walked over to the horse stables and saw the different horse breeds – there were many besides the famous Lipizzaners. Some of them had quite a few awards.

We headed back to the horse show arena for the noon show. Besides our 3 buses, there were probably at least 2 or 3 other buses at the park as well. The horse show was pretty cool – an equestrian archer, performing horses, a demonstration on the use of whips with audience participation, a demonstration where they rode horses around the track without spilling any of their drinks, and a Chico (Hungarian cowboy) who controlled 5 horses while standing on 2 of them.

After the show, we headed inside for lunch. The room we were in was gorgeous with beautiful woodwork. We had white and red wine, water, spritzer, and apricot juice. There was a salad, cheese, sausage, and butter on the table. It was at this point that I realized there was a difference between salami and sausage – the sausage seems more spicy and what I expect a salami to taste like. Before long, they brought out a HUGE platter of food – pickled red cabbage, pickled slaw, pickled peppers, pickled cucumbers, and 6 types of meat: duck, sausage (like a hot dog), pork, fish, schnitzel, and chicken. It was a massive amount of food and was really good.

After lunch we had a little while longer to explore the park – we headed out to the zoo where they had goats, rabbits, puli dogs, sheep, and hairy pigs. On the way over, Christina our local tour guide caught up with us to talk to us about buying Tokaji as I had asked her earlier if she had any recommendations.  She recommended only buying Tokaji earlier than 2011 as anything later than that was probably fake.  

After checking out the small zoo, we walked back to the goulash making demonstration. They had already made the goulash in large pots hanging over a wood fire. The goulash was delicious – very simple – meat, potato, carrot, garlic, onion, paprika.

We got back on the bus and headed to the Viola after seeing a few more beautiful sights along the way. We headed straight back to the Central Market taking a couple of pictures along the way.

   

We had a few things on our list to buy after doing some reading on the bus:  Tokaji (one of our favorite dessert wines), sausage (not salami), paprika, t-shirt, and goose liver.  We just wandered around without much of a plan - going up to the top floor to find Seth a t-shirt and then back to the main floor to find some sausage.  We tried some spicy sausage at a stall and really liked it - they were also selling the black/gold goose liver tins so we got one of those as well - the total was 5840 HUF or about $20.  We also noticed that they were selling caviar.  We ended up with a 56 g jar of "gold collection" osetra caviar for 6000 HUF and also a 100 g Imperial collection osetra caviar for 44,000 HUF for a total of about $180. We have no idea how authentic this caviar is but we thought we might as well give them a try - doing a "head to head" comparison of the 2 types. We went downstairs to the first floor to see the "fish" section which was not as impressive as the main and upper floors.  We wandered into the Aldi's but were unimpressed.  We went back upstairs to the main floor and bought a bottle of 2002 Tokaji (6 puttonyos - 4690 HUF or about $16) also picked up some paprika - both the hot and sweet varieties (7 Euros).  We also found one last bottle of Tokaji on our way out the door - a 1995 Tokaji (5 puttonyos - 7500 HUF or about $26).    

We headed back to the Viola, rested a bit and started some packing, Dean had mentioned on the bus that we would be getting departure information which we did on a final Daily Adventurer.  I went upstairs to Dragan's desk to pick up our tags and find out our departure time.  

We then headed to dinner.

Grilled Eggplant

Traditional "Somlauer Nocker"

After dinner, we headed up to the lounge to watch the Rubik's Cube Magic show.  This was about the only show we went to see the whole week and mostly went because our son was so interested in Rubik's Cubes and had a nice collection at home.  The show was interesting although I'm not sure which part was the "magic" part.  After the show, everyone received their own Rubik's Cube and instructions on how to "solve" the cube.

"All solved"....well, not quite.  :-)

After the show, we went up to the sun deck to watch the "Illuminations" cruise.  The buildings lit up along the Danube were spectacular.  It seems like every Disney trip that we've ever taken, there are those moments that bring tears to my eyes.  Usually it's a moment involving the kids - watching their pure joy and enjoying their enjoyment.  It was this part of the trip that unexpectedly brought tears to my eyes - enjoying the beautiful lights with Seth at the end of a most amazing trip.

Next post:

Day 8 - Budapest, Hungary to Oklahoma City, OK and final thoughts