Budapest by Bike

SewDiva creating scarves
Bug riding in Margaret Island park

Royal Palace lit at night

Fishermen's Bastion & St. Mathias Cathedral behind the Chain Bridge

Today was our last day in Budapest so it was time for doing the things we hadn’t yet gotten around to. SewDiva is making scarves for souvenirs. She is rubbing the beautiful manhole covers with crayon onto silk scarf blanks and then will set them and over-dye the scarves when she gets home. Bear thinks this is a great idea but the thought of associating himself with her sitting in the middle of Vaci (the pedestrian shopping street) is more than he can handle so he was off for coffee. Bug had some shopping that needed to happen and then came and watched SewDiva do her thing. Needless to say people stop and stare and some even engage in conversation.

We rented bikes for the afternoon. As with our usual luck we managed to be here for a major holiday. In Budapest Pentecost is a big holiday, most of the shops close (but not the banks?). So our plan for an uncrowded day biking at Margaret Island (the whole island is a park) was foiled. But it was fun anyway. The street on the island was closed so we only had to deal with the busses, other bikers, pedal cars, electric cars, and walkers. We took a rest stop at the lily pond where the frogs were loudly expressing their disapproval of all the people around the pond. There were also turtles sunning on the statue and on the lily pads. We noticed some swimming around and then realized there were two different kinds: stripes and spots. Apparently a spot came too close to stripe territory so a stripe dove down, faced off against spot and waved his fingers in spot’s face. It worked, spot swam away.

After a rest SewDiva went out to finish her scarf rubbings. Bear again hid. She picked up a couple of little girls who were most interested in helping her choose her colors. Very cute!

Dinner was at an open-air restaurant along the Danube were we could watch the lights come on on the bridges and the castle across the river. Very, very beautiful. A nice thing about Europe is that they don’t expect you to just eat and leave, they expect you to sit around and enjoy your drink and the company you are with. You actually have to ask them for the check. So after a while of enjoying the people walking by, the river boats and the lights we decided to become walkers ourselves. Our regular evening rainstorm was late: 9:00 rather than 5:00. We were running through the storm back to the apartment. We thought to finish our day with one last farewell stop at our internet café, but it had closed early!