hello - goodbye (hungarian)

the chain bridge and castle on our last night

day 4: duh.

we had planned our last day in budapest down to the minute. we got up with the alarm, ordered breakfast, and got down to parliament just in time for the first english tour. we were able to be in budapest on a monday because it was a government holiday in germany. funny how things in one european country happen in all european countries... parliament was closed. we honestly didn't know what to do with ourselves. we had planned so well - sorta - that we just couldn't open our minds to doing anything else. so we started walking.

after an hour of straight walking we ended up just a few bridges down the danube. gellert hill looked so close, but obviously we weren't thinking things through this morning. the gellert hotel and baths are in a beautiful old building. they say swimming there is like bathing in a palace. we decided to pay for the "just looking" ticket to see the stained glass dome and greek statues. across the street, gellert hill offers lovely views of the city, but after so much walking we were not in the mood to climb.

we did walk to a tiny overlook where we met a funny old woman selling embroidered table linens. she asked where we were from, we said california, and she said she had a brother in detroit. umm, okay. we bought a runner and attempted to chat. as we walked away she kept called "hello! hello!" it took us a moment to realize that "hello" meant goodbye.

we tried to use the trams but we wasted our ticket money on a machine that was obviously, to everyone else, unplugged. so we walked back to the hotel through an interesting pedestrian area. the streets of budapest reminded us of paris. we arrived at the hotel, got our luggage and cabbed to the airport.

as we paid for our taxi dan was happy with himself because he finally figured out how to confidently tip in hungary. only took 3 days and a lot of angry people to learn.

even without having seen parliament, and the castle caves, we felt pretty satisfied with our trip to hungary. i would recommend to anyone a trip the most happy-go-lucky of the former soviet blocks.