Hey Puppy

Our last day in Budapest.  I’m always a little bit nostalgic the last day we’re in a city.  I always wonder if I’ll ever be back in that particular city.  The world is such a big and wonderful place with so many places to see, will I be back or will I end up somewhere else?  Like maybe Rome or Kalihi?

We had passed a dessert/bakery shop the day before so decided to stop there this morning.  We’re so glad we did because this place totally blew away all the other dessert places we had been.  FYI, in case you happen to be in the area, it is called Fröchlich Confectionery.  They have a cake called flodni which has layers of walnut, poppy seed, and apple which was sooo good.  Heather got an apple pastry thing that was also the bomb!  To top it off, their cappuccinos were also good. 

I wish we could bring this flodni stuff back with us!!

After our shnacky, we decided to do something a bit different on our last day.  We had read about this place called Memento Park that is located a fair distance outside the city.  It is a small park that features monuments/statues from the age of communist dictatorship.  Sounds great right??  Heather was so excited because she’s a HUGE communist dictatorship history buff in case you didn’t know.  She might not even know herself, but she is!

We went through the standard rigormoral associated with going somewhere kind of far but figured things out without too much problems.  The ride out there was actually pretty cool because we got to see a side of Budapest that was different than the tourist areas.  It took us a metro, tram, and a bus to get there. 

Look, a suburban dog!

We found the park really very interesting.  The statues give you this feeling of imposing communist ideals – the workers party and the grim yet grandiose monuments.  We were not sure we were going to like it, but it was totally great!  Another reasons we really liked it was that we were finally at a place where we could be somewhat disrespectful around the statues and no one would care that much.  Plus the place was not very crowded so at times we felt we had the whole park to ourselves.

Big ol' hunk of steel statue

I really like this one, it shows a soldier shaking hands with a worker. Keep in mind a lot of these statues are pretty big which adds to the dramatic effect

Heather spanking some booty

I like this one because they had a wild monkey that was looking for flowers on the right side of the picture

Camera fun - scene 1

Camera fun - scene 2...damn that is a big statue

I really like the way this photo came out

Heather - crouching tiger, hidden monkey

This statue was dressed exactly like Heather. How embarassing!

He can't go anywhere without his teddy bear

Had enough of communist monuments?  You can browse our flickr pictures for more if you want more.

On the way outside the park, I saw this great billboard.  They’re supposed to be fluorescent lights!

I have no idea what this says..Any Hungarians care to translate?

Some of you may have noticed in a lot of our pictures that Budapest has a lot of graffiti everywhere.  There were some really nice ones at the bus station that we were at.  Here’s two of them, I still don’t understand the second one at all.

Who the best? Budapest!

WTF?

After Memento Park we were thinking of going to another church to take more pictures but then realized that we were soon going to be in Rome and the Vatican, so we might as well go eat instead!  So we had a really early dinner and we both thoroughly enjoyed our meals — a great last dinner for our stay in Budapest!

I couldn't resist and had to order another goose leg, this time with homemade noodles with ewe cheese

Heather got the beef stew with noodles which was incredible -- very flavorful, tender, and oh so nice

After our big meal, we went back to the room and packed and did some housekeeping to get ready for our EARLY flight tomorrow.  We took a short nap hoping that when we woke up, we’d magically be hungry again so we could eat another big meal.  But it was not meant to be!  We woke up still full, but not so full that we couldn’t go out at 9pm on a quest — a quest for dessert!

So we took a short metro ride and started walking around but a lot of the places were closed.  We then came back to our own neighborhood and walked all over the place, hoping beyond hope that we would find a place that seemed worthy of our last last dessert here.  Just when we had just about given up, we stumbled on a place that looked perfect, and it was!

Goodbye Budapest!

Hello Ice Cream!!

There even was a piano player to commemorate our wonderful dessert

So there it is, 5 wonderful days in Budapest.  The food here is incredible, the days were sunny and warm, the city is beautiful and clean, and we had a wonderful stay here.  See you in Rome!