Budapest

My visit to Budapest was too short, and went too fast. So fast that I'm just now getting a chance to sit and pull my thoughts together about the city, and I'm no longer there. As I write this, I'm in a nice boutique hotel in Bratislava -- my second stop along the Danube River this trip -- sipping a Slovak wine and listening to old Take That hits. By the way, I had no idea that Hungarian and Slovak wines were a thing I should seek out, but I've tried 3 different local rosés so far, and they've all been lovely. Who knew?

Anyway. Budapest. I'd been meaning to get there for a few years, but had never managed to fit it into the travel schedule. Then when it became clear I wouldn't be able to use my ticket for the Robbie Williams show in Edinburgh this June, the Budapest stop on his tour became a perfect excuse to plan a trip. Of course, I never spend more than a couple of days in any single place when I travel (god / Elvis forbid I actually relax and sit still for 5 minutes), so Budapest was just the first of a few stops on a two week journey.

I arrived at my hotel on the edge of the Józsefváros part of town -- supposedly a rough area at night, but I never saw or felt any indication of that -- at around 8pm on Tuesday, after about 20 hours of travel. It could have been shorter, I'm sure, but I took British Airways through Heathrow because I'm addicted to my gold member perks. But even with perks, I can't sleep on airplanes, so I was too exhausted to do anything but eat, watch some TV, and pass out for the night, with my alarm set nice and early to make the best of Wednesday. Ah, the best laid plans. 

My jet lag and I got out of bed, very well rested, just before noon on Wednesday, leaving only a few hours to sight-see before it was time for Rob and Erasure. Because of that, I got out the old guidebook and found a few places to visit within walking distance. First, I walked across the Liberty Bridge over the Danube, and up to the Cave Church, aka a lot of other things, including the Gellért Hill Cave or Gellérthegyi Barlang. Essentially, it's a chapel carved into the side of the mountain, and the main entrance looks like a cave. Very cool. Then after taking a photo of the statue of St Stephen outside (he's a big deal in Bupapest, apparently), I started ascending the winding paths and stairs up Gellért Hill.

After making a few stops for photos of the views, I determined I was only halfway to the Citadel and Liberation Monument that I could see up top... and that I wasn't going any further. Between the hot day and my bad knees, I'd touristed enough. My trusty, rusty Fitbit indicated that I'd already been up the equivalent of 20 flights of stairs when I gave up, so I officially take issue with the place being called a hill and stand by my decision to quit while I could still use my joints well enough to get back down.

I descended the same way I went up, then took a walk on flat ground, along the front side of the Cave Church and the monastery which accompanied it, down to the other end of the hill (mountain). There I found a gigantic statue of St Gellért himself, above a waterfall, giant crucifix in hand, looming over me as I crossed the Elisabeth Bridge. Back on the other side of the Danube, lunch, a bit of shopping, and a stop at the hotel awaited me before the night's entertainment. 

I won't get into fangirl mode over Robbie here, but I will say that the Groupama Arena is a great stadium, and the show was fantastic. Erasure sounded perfect, and I never knew that they don't bring a band on tour... it's just Vince Clark back there with his electronics and occasionally a guitar. Wow. 

Rob was his usual brilliant showman, but the crowd took a lot of the fun out of it. I'm too old to stand for hours, pressing my way through the standing section to get close enough to see, which means I pay for one of the front seated rows at these stadium gigs. But even so, when Let Me Entertain You blasts from the speakers, we all stand up, and stay there until the last note of Angels. We sing along. We dance. We cheer. And when Rob commands that we put our hands in the air, you can damn well bet that we do as we're told. This has been true in London (both times), Munich, and Barcelona. But not in Budapest. A small portion of the standing crowd played along, but everyone else just kind of listened politely and clapped once in a while. In other cities, Mr Williams will start the crowd singing Angels, and then just sit and listen... and we will sing the whole rest of the song. The Budapest crowd barely finished the lyric in progress when he went quiet. I don't get it. I assume it's a cultural thing. And I wasn't going to stand up and dance around and have a bunch of people shout at me in Hungarian that I was blocking their view. So even though the atmosphere was shite, as Jody might say, I enjoyed myself as always and was buzzing long after I got back to the hotel. 

Which meant that I pretty much just dragged myself out of bed and straight onto the train this morning, no more adventures. But now that I'm in the next city of my journey, well... to be continued...