Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: Round The World 2006-07
Seeking out the highlights of Pest
I allowed myself the luxury of an extra couple of hours in bed, compared to Saturday. Not exactly a long lie, though, and by 0830 I was going up to the Club Lounge to sample the breakfast offerings there - with view, of course! It was really rather quiet at first, but was to fill up as I ate. I had cereal and a selection of items from the continental buffet - nothing heavy. When I'd had enough, I revisited my room to get ready for going out and, soon enough, it was time to hit the streets again.
What a contrast from the previous day, in terms of the number of people going about! The place seemed deserted! But I'm not complaining, as I'm no fan of crowds. I began by walking along the riverbank towards the Elizabeth Bridge, which I crossed to pay a visit to the imposing statue of St Gerard. I re-crossed the bridge, as the main object of this morning's walk was to try to pick out at least some of the highlights of Pest, with the help of a guide book and map. I found it fairly easy to find my way around, although at times the said highlights seemed to be very spread out. Or was it that my feet still hadn't recovered from the previous day's exploits? Anyway, here's a pictorial guide :-
By the time I had taken in that
little lot, it was a little past my usual lunchtime. I decided to
head back to base and spend the rest of the day simply relaxing in
my very comfortable hotel room. And why not? I had four weeks of
this gruelling sightseeing malarkey coming up, don't you know?
For lunch, I had Room Service bring me an
authentic Hungarian goulash soup, followed by a Caesar salad with
king prawns, and I finished my gift bottle of Hungarian white wine.
Lovely!
I had a late checkout at 1600 and had booked my airport transfer to coincide with this. It meant I was at Ferihegy a good hour before check-in opened, but I didn't mind in such modern and uncrowded surroundings. In good time, I had got rid of my suitcase and was relaxing in the very acceptable BA Terraces Lounge, to await boarding of my flight back to London.
(Link to flight log in side panel)
Baggage reclamation took forever - a situation not exactly uncommon at LHR. In a novel touch, I needed Hoppa H6 rather than the usual H1 on this occasion, but in an altogether predictable turn of events, all the others turned up before mine. Never mind - I was soon checking in to the Holiday Inn Ariel for the first time.
