Dec 19, Budapest Day 2

We spent the day in roaming around Pest today.  We left our room at 11:30 am and walked south on Vaci Street, one the main pedestrian market routes.  We soon stopped for lunch -- beer and Langos for me.  Langos is a popular street food similar to pizza but with various Hungarian tooppings.  Unfortunately, my dough was way too stale or overcooked -- I could barely cut the crust with a knife -- but being my first one, I didn't realize it was not normal.  I later discovered it was NOT, as I watched others eat theirs.

We continued our walk down Vaci Street, ...

... eventually ending at Central Market, a popular place where the locals as well as tourist could buy just about anything Hungarian, with a particular focus on foods, ...

... like paprika, ...

... and sausages.

We then headed back north on Vaci Street and rested with a Schnapps and hot wine.

We went back to the hotel at 4:00 for a rest.  Below shows the main entry hallway of the hotel and the elevator button that took us to Floor 1/2.

We ventured back out at 5:45.  For the first time on this trip, it seemed appropriate to take the subway to a further-out part of Budapest to get to District VII.  Until now, all the sites had been within easy walking distance of our hotel, largely because I had chosen hotels to be in the middle of the main tourist area.  But District VII was supposed to be a "lively" area of the city and I wanted to venture out of the primary tourist area.  We only had to take two stops to District VII.  The area was dark.  We walked many blocks without seeing hardly a sole.  We couldn't find any of the restaurants that Google was showing.  We felt like we had gone into the Twighlight Zone.  So we took the subway back to the main tourist area.  In retrospect, the subway ticket system had been difficult to figure out, we wasted a lot of time, we could have done it cheaper, easier, and quicker using a taxi, and in the end, it was all for nothing.  The only real mistake of our trip.

Back in the comfort of the central tourist area, we had Manhattans at the Ritz-Carlton.

Then walked to a very good Hungarian restaurant right next to our hotel.  I had Goulash and Chicken Paprikash.  Mary had the New York Pasta appetizer.  The Italian food was always the best on this entire trip.