Budapest - The First Day Here

The weather was FOUL on Wednesday when I was taken to Hamilton services by The Man of the Place. With sideways rain and wind, it was very unpleasant.

On the way up the road The Man of the Place and I passed this interesting van.

I met up with Gordon and Louise at the Hamilton services just off the motorway and after saying goodbye to my dear husband, the three of us were off to the airport.

Here are Louise and Gordon at the airport.

After an uneventful Ryanair flight from Prestwick to Budapest, we were in Hungary where there was glorious sunshine!

We were collected from the airport by our hosts and driven away to start our wonderful Hungarian adventure.

I must say that the house is HUGE! I mean really big. After a wonderful late dinner at ____ the five of us returned to the house with the specific purpose of christening our hosts wine tasting room (just off the wine cellar). Left to right are Gordon, The Chameleon, The Hungarian and Louise.As part of our breakfast on the first morning, we were introduced to the delights of Hungarian cakes. The men in our party went foraging and collected some bread and a couple of kilos of cake from a nearby bakery.

I am not the only photographer in the group.

Our first day of sightseeing was so fun! Here we are in front of the spectacular Parliament Building in the centre of Budapest. Gordon, The Hungarian, Louise and Chameleon. I ran out of superlatives pretty early on in the proceedings.

I am going to omit most of the photographs of architecture and write about it later on when I get home. In the meantime, I will focus on food and friends.

This is what I had for my lunch on Thursday.

This is the ceiling above us as we ate our lunch at the New York Cafe. Yes, it was that opulent! The wonderful things about having a little holiday with fellow bloggers is that they not only understand completely when one takes a photo of the lunch, they are probably doing the same thing. It took us a lot longer to walk around the sites we were seeing because everybody was taking photos.

With all the beauty to be seen in Budapest, I found myself worrying at one point that I should probably just enjoy the sites in real time rather than through the lens of a camera.

As yesterday was the 1st of May and a national holiday in Hungary, a number of places weren't open.

True to form, I was just as interested in the plants as the wonderful buildings. Budapest has Elm trees in the city centre! All the elm trees around us, back home in Scotland (as well as the elms in the midwest) have died of Dutch Elm Disease. I was so happy to see the familiar little round seeds.