Food Tour and City Park
My mom really wanted to do a food tour of Budapest to get to try more traditional Hungarian food, so I went on a food tour with her! This began in the morning at the Great Market, where we walked around the stalls and were introduced to some of the products. There were six people in our group: my mom and I, a young couple from Boston, a graduate student who had been traveling across Europe, and an older woman who would be taking a river cruise after touring Budapest for a few days. Our guide, Barbara, was a native of Budapest and had lots of good tips. She told us which of the different kinds of paprika to buy, showed us the paste or sauce that is used to make goulash, and took us to try different kinds of sausage.
In the picture the left two are regular sausage, first with and then without paprika, then is Hungarian grey cattle, next is the Mangalitsa (or furry pig), then is horse meat, then Mangalitsa with paprika, and finally goose crackling. I really liked both Mangalitsa, and the horse meat was actually really good! I really did not like the goose crackling.
We went to eat at this restaurant, which was visited by Anthony Bourdain in Parts Unknown—Eat like Bourdain. Barbara ordered a bunch of different dishes and we tried lots of food. My favorites were the cooked goat cheese, the fried stuffed mushrooms, and the sausage with fresh horseradish. I forgot to get a picture of the food!
Next we had a quick stop at an upscale bar for a shot of palinka, a fruit brandy and one of the signature drinks in Hungry (the other is unicum, a minty herbal liquor). Pálinka comes in many different fruit flavors, and we had plum. I am going to eventually try all the different kinds! We then made our way to the bakery Auguszt, where we had several different kinds of cakes. My favorites were the dobos torte, a 10-layer cake of sponge cake and chocolate buttercream that is topped with a hard, crunchy, thin caramel, and the eszterházy torte, a layered cake of vanilla rum buttercream and almond meringue dough cake, with chopped up walnuts around the edge. These are soooooo yummy, and I would recommend trying either. Finally, we finished up at a wine cellar where we tasted a few Hungarian wines with local cheeses. I like the sweet wines, and we will have to make a trip up to Tokaj so we can see where they make the Tokaj wine, which was my favorite. This was a wonderful food tour, and Barbara even emailed me after with some restaurant suggestions for our time here in Budapest.
When we got home, we decided it would be a good day to check out the city park, or Városliget. My mom and I took the kids while JonPaul went to the phone store to figure out the phone plan. We were going to go to the Museum of Fine Arts, but since we are not EU residents they were going to charge full price for the kids instead of them being free. No thank you, we will save that for later! We also wanted to look at Heroes' Square, but it was gated off for another event. Oh well, maybe next time. Instead we walked through the park and to Vajdahunyad Castle, an imposing castle in the middle of the park built in—you guessed it—1986.
There were several statues around the castle, and the kids had to take pictures by all of them. Some of the poses they came up with were really funny!
I knew there was a big playground somewhere in the park, so we kept walking. We passed several small playgrounds, but I told them to wait until we found the playground I was looking for. Well, it didn’t disappoint. This was one of the best playgrounds I have seen! Built just a few years ago, this playground has slides that are like three stories tall. Willow started climbing up one of the structures and got stuck, so I had to go up there and help her. She was able to do it herself, but it was scary. That is definitely a really long way to fall, and it made me nervous to watch them. There was also a big balloon that had climbing structures inside, which was super cool. Willow found some lily pad jumpers that she pretended were getting her over the lava. There were so many other neat stations that I will need to take some more pictures soon.
Beside the playground was an adult workout station. Zoey had fun on this doing some conditioning for her arms, and practiced her handstands on the floor bar they had. There was even a rope climb. If the weather stays nice, we will be back so Zoey can do some workout on this obstacle course.
