Day-11 On to Budapest

After getting up and getting ready we had time to go down to the breakfast at the hotel.  It was excellent and we enjoyed the time to get ready for yet another day of travel.  The day is beautiful again as we leave Vienna… We are off to bring the rain to Budapest today so we will have achieved a perfect record of rain while we are on the trip.  The U-3 underground dropped us right at the train station so we made it to the train in plenty of time and found our seats in the First Class car.  It is pretty cool we are facing each other across a table and we have our own window.  

For about 40 Euros per person extra we could have upgraded to Premium Class on this train.  We would get lunch and free drinks for the three hour trip…  Didn't seem to be worth it, so we just went 1st Class.  As you can see the seats aren't bad… even in 1st class.  

One of the hardest  things to manage is the public transportation system when you don't know the language.  But, there is  a standard that mask this workable, "The direction is shown by the last stop on the line."  That saved us again in Budapest.  We bought a three day ticket to cover our entire stay (about $18 each) and headed for Astoria where our hotel is located.  The room is huge.  Since we got in early… we took off toward the Danube and took a river cruise.  That was a great idea,  We got introduced to the city from the English language commentary on the boat and came up with a few ideas for our must see list.

We rode the tram to the end of the line just exploring and looking for a place to eat… After that we headed back to the general area of the hotel and found a "shopping" street a couple of blocks off the main street that had stalls and restaurants.  We picked one and had dinner.  The presentation was so unusual I took a picture of it.  We wandered back to the store and picked up a large bottle of water and finally headed back to the hotel as it was getting late.

Internet access is going to be a problem for the blog.  I may have to write and then post when I can get access.