Hey, ho...Just got home.
Did four days in Bucharest, ten days river cruising on the lower Danube, threading through Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, and Hungary, and booked in to a Budapest guesthouse for an additional ten days on our own after the cruise. It was like a room with a frig in a B&B; breakfast was offered as an option, but we passed because of all the other, far more tempting offerings on the utca.
It was basically a heat wave the entire month. We had rain in Budapest, but it was thunder and lightening with light sprinkles, returning to clear skies and higher humidity soon after. Lightning storms are a novelty for me, so I found it fascinating, but I still abhorred the unseasonable heat. I had prepared for cooler temperatures. I never wore more than half the 'layers' I was advised to prepare myself with, thereby overworking the lightest layer.
I did a three day side trip to Krakow, transiting Slovakia by auto in the process. My travel companion remained in Budapest, sampling spas. I think she said she managed to get to six of the nine, while I limited myself to one day at Szent Lukas Spa. (She said Schechenya Spa, the big public bath which serves as an anchor in the big central public park, was not an ideal experience; too many callous spasters in one place at one time. She liked the smaller 'Turkish styled' spa.)
No ruin pubs were visited, but we passed one on the street. Pest Centrum has an active night life seven days a week and I, being an early riser, took a photo of the street early Monday morning before the steet sweepers had been through....I personally think the city has problem and should seek counseling.
Pricing all around was exceedingly reasonable. Indeed, the reason we went was the air fare was subsumed in to the entire cruise cost, and then, the accommodation, and daily living costs, were very reasonable....even eating at a different restaurant every meal of the day. If you have an apartment with a even just a frig and a microwave, you can live even more cheaply and splurge on one main meal a day.
Goulash is fine, but eating hot soup in the unseasonably warm weather did not appeal to me. My perpetual search was for iced beverages. Fortunately, the innumerable bars cater to ice consumption, but even they can be niggardly with ice. I did try the palinka, which came to me first as rakia in Serbia and Croatia. It's the same stuff, plum brandy. Fiery, or sweet, or both, depending. What surprised me is that every decent farm household has a pretty decent still and bottling process, like the home brewers here in the US.
I was told that chicken paprikas was the dish to try. I tried it once at a rather toney Buda street cafe and was unimipressed, so I thought that it might be a little 'novel' and tried it another night at a Pest Kiraly marketplace restaurant (that had awesome raspberry milkshakes) to see if I had missed some nuance. I hadn't. It tasted the same, which was 'meh'. I don't see what the excitement was....but, let's talk about the Esterhazy torte served at the Anonymous cafe in Schechenya Park Transylvanian castle. That and a decent coffee is worthy a recommendation....and bakeries with multitudes of fresh baked goods- and coffee - about every 800 feet in every direction on every street.
