What's Up Al ? 遊記隨筆 生活點滴

Starting from The Black Forest to the Danube Delta in Romania and its eventual exit into The Black Sea, the Danube would pass through the grand city of the once-mighty Habsburg Empire - Budapest. We arrived close to sunset at the Keleti train station and walked towards the river to find shelter for the night. We found an apartment by chance in the Oktogon area in Pest, which overlooked the Buda Hills on the western side of the Danube. Perhaps as a result of the Ottoman heritage (Hungary was ruled under the Ottoman Empire), we found a Turkish buffet restaurant and we had a much needed satisfying dinner after all the hours of train journeys from Slovakia; we did skip the tantalising-looking but over-the-top sugary Turkish desserts, though.

The following two days were spent crossing the many beautifully-built Danube bridges (a few of which were mostly destroyed during the WWII battles), walking up the Buda Hill to the majestic castle, fighting off hordes of tourists to take a clear shot of the Parliament, admiring the countless classical buildings, enjoying our Zero-Cokes in the many leafy squares, visiting the huge 300 acres City Park on the eastern edge of Pest where we briefly walked around the lakes and the zoo (we also bumped into a gang of about 50 middle-age motorbikers holding an impromptu concert near the Park, blaring out Born To Be Wild and such ...), as well as winding our way down the back of the Buda Hills to the Deli train station to fix our tickets for our next destination of Zagreb - now, that's busy !