Monday, June 26, 2006

To the UK, on to Budapest, back to the UK and back to Sydney

I find that there are two reasons for not posting to the blog:

1. Not enough has happened.

2. Too much has happened and writing it all down becomes a daunting task.

The situation at the moment is 2. Still, here are some highlights from my company trip to Budapest; I've tried to keep it short (hah!) to avoid causing anyone to fall asleep while reading.

Back to the UK

I left last Wednesday evening and arrived 3pm at Heathrow on Thursday, not feeling too bad. I got to bed at a reasonable hour but had to get up early to go to work, still feeling not too bad.

After working remotely for 4 months, it was really nice to go into the office. I got some stuff done that I needed to talk to people for, I was in the same time zone as my customers (for one day) and I installed some software from the network that would have taken about a day to copy over the internet (and then only if I could keep the VPN up for that long). Everyone seemed to remember who I was, which was nice.

I then went out to the pub Friday evening. This was my one night to see everyone I know. Tall order, huh? The evening actually went well with relatively few complications. It was really brilliant to see everyone and I feel that I had at least a short chat with everyone who made it along.

Even though we were kicked out of the pub at a reasonably prompt 11:30pm, by the time I got back to Essex and into bed it was 1:30am. Alarm set for 8am to make it to the airport the next day.

This is where my body clock started behaving oddly. Despite clearly being short on sleep, I woke up at 6:30am. The only reasonable explanation I can come up with for this is that having been on three 7 hour flights, I was not used to sleeping for more than 5-6 hours. Still it meant I had plenty of time to pack.

On to Budapest

Budapest is a spa town. Being an idiot, I had left my swimming costume back in Australia. Still, my swimming costume was bought when we were last in Australia (2002) and has got to the saggy stage so I did need to buy a new one.

Gatwick turns out to be not too bad for shopping: I managed to get a costume in Monsoon. While I was there I also bought a dress for a wedding we are attending in the summer. I have been worrying about this as I am going to be the girlfriend of the best man, which is surely some kind of responsibility but without a pre-arranged outfit included (being a bridesmaid is much easier). It seemed a bit silly to be buying a posh dress and then taking it to and from Budapest with me, but it exactly matched a hat of my sister's that I had just been offered so there was really nothing I could do.

I felt I needed a sleep when we arrived, but I only had time to unpack and then it was straight out to dinner.

We dined in a lovely courtyard restaurant on Castle Hill in Buda and I had some super duck in sour cherry sauce. Cherries seem to be big in Hungary, which is good with me! I completely forgot to take any pictures until it got too dark (no change there then). After the restaurant we wandered around trying to find a bar (or more precisely the bar that the rest of the company was in) for about one and a half hours. Tom complained but I thought it was great. Randomness late at night was always the best part of an evening for me (in general if I could skip 9pm - 2am and start there it would suit me fine) and now I don't drink, bars are even less exciting. When we finally arrived at the bar it was noisy and I was refused a chocolate based non-alcoholic cocktail (I think they didn't have one of the ingredients). I went to bed.

Sunday: I walk

I was up at 9:30am to catch the end of breakfast. (I woke up earlier but forced myself back to sleep again - enough is enough.) Breakfast was a big disappointment after the Hydro Majestic the weekend before. Ric found something unpleasant looking in his eggs, the sausages were widely panned and not much enthusiasm shown for anything else. I found some fruit (OK, but not exciting) and had some pastries that had been described as "OK" (the highest praise from my breakfast companions for any item). They were indeed "OK".

I started the day by walking to the Gellert baths and having a swim. On the way I bought a dress that was vaguely reminiscent of a Hungarian peasant dress from a shop clearly aimed at tourists (it was open on Sunday). Still it made me feel like I was a proper Hungarian.

The pool was small but nicely decorated, however I think the description "like having a bath in a cathedral" is somewhat pushing it. I then found a cafe and had a cup of tea while I read my guidebooks to find out what to do. I survived the whole weekend using the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet. They complemented each other well but I think the rough guide did slightly better with its layout by area rather than attraction type. I selected the Museum of Ethnography as my destination.

I went back to the hotel first to put some sun-tan lotion on, but discovered that I could pretty much keep in the shade while I was walking through the town so in the end I just ditched my swimming kit. I then walked through the Jewish quarter (Erzsebetvaros, where out hotel was) and Terezvaros (which I would describe as the west end).

I found a lot of things on my wanders including an English language bookshop (run by an American environmental activist who now needs to earn some money as his girlfriend wants 4 kids) - I bought some books, of course -, the State Opera house, St Stephen's Basilica and the Houses of Parliament.



Treehugger Dan's English Language Bookshop



The entrance to the State Opera House

Inside St Stephen's Basilica, a choir and orchestra were practising so I stayed to listen for a while. I only realised when someone asked a resident old man if the concert was that evening that Sunday night had been designated as a "free" night when we could go off on our own. I had previously ignored this as I had assumed that I would not want to go anywhere toute seule but it seemed that this was no longer the case.

The museum of Ethnography had been described in the guide book as one of the finest museums in Budapest but little visited by tourists. It was correct.

Outside the front door was a sign saying something about "Juin" and "zarva". Zarva is one Hungarian word I had managed to learn. It was on all the shop doors on Sunday; it means closed. The museum certainly looked closed too, but as an eternal optimist I tried the door anyway. It opened.

However, once inside I was still not convinced that the museum was not indeed "zarva". Had they closed the museum and forgotten to lock the door? The entrance hall was large, empty and unlike a museum. There was a brightly colored sign about an exhibition, which was reassuring - it was the only clue that I was in fact in a museum. Then, as in a film about a bookshop where strange things happen, an old man behind a glass screen in a dark corner came slowly in to focus. I gave him my money.

Getting to the exhibits was also peculiar. The whole building resembles an old palace. There were printed A4 sheets of arrows directing you to the exhibits, but none of the other branches were roped off implying that you could go that way if you wanted. I was too scared though so I followed the arrows. There were also a whole load of doors with names on them as if the building were also used as an academic institution.

The exhibition itself was very interesting and was basically a complete description of 19th century Hungarian peasant life using objects from the period. There were some lovely shop signs for hatters, boot-makers and so on and a wide range of clothes, utensils, furniture, work tools and so on. There were descriptions in each section in English so you knew what you were looking at.



An example of an exhibit: Some old Hungarian musical instruments

The lights went off just as I finished looking round and I realised that the museum was shutting. I took some photos of the building, which could itself have been a tourist attraction and nearly got locked in. I saw only 3 other people while I was in the museum and only one of these seemed to be actually looking at the exhibits; the others seemed to be more on their way through to somewhere else.



The ceiling of the Ethnography Museum

I then wandered until 7pm when I joined the throng trying to squeeze into the Basilica. The concert was free so there was a great deal of demand and no tickets so I was pleased I had got there in plenty of time. I enjoyed the concert, although the music was not as good as the snippets I had heard earlier had led me to believe (not quite sombre enough for me). I don't go to see enough music and I'm pleased I went, especially as Budapest seems to be a very musical city.



St Stephen's just before the concert

I got home at 10pm and had a bath. The guide book said that Budapest was hot and dusty, it was right there as well. I was going to go out to the pub and meet everyone else but I didn't manage it...

Monday: I walk, but less enthusiastically

At breakfast on Sunday, I found an exciting chocolate cake, the kind you get for afternoon tea and a kind of creamy dessert. This improved breakfast somewhat.

My first aim was to go swimming in the Lido on Margaret Island and I made the same sun-tan lotion decision that I had made on Saturday. Unfortunately half way there, I realised that this was the wrong decision. If I was swimming in an open air pool there would be nowhere to hide.

At breakfast, Matthew and Karen said that they were looking for things to do that didn't involve too much walking as they had worn themselves out and blistered their feet. At the time I thought that could never possibly happen to me, however after walking halfway to Margaret Island, back again and then all the way there I felt that walking no longer had the same appeal. I sat for a while by the fountain which plays music through black speakers on sticks. The whole area was immensely redolent of The Prisoner (60s TV show): the grass was green, there were speakers stuck in the ground playing cheering music, everyone was smiling and brightly dressed and there were several odd two man cars and bicycles that I have not seen anywhere other than this island and in The Prisoner.



The Fountain

I flaked out a bit on the rest of the day. I failed to visit my pre-determined targets of Heroes' square and the Palace of Miracles (which is the rather-oddly-named-for-a-religious-city Science Museum).

I did make it to a famous cake shop I wanted to go to (Gerbeard) but couldn't face going in, as I had only brought my guide books with me and was sick of reading about Budapest.

I got home about 4:30pm and listened to Cadfael on audio tape. This had the required restorative effect and I was raring to go by the time we met up in the bar at 7pm.

We went to a very posh restaurant on Sunday night; amazingly I don't think we embarrassed ourselves too much. The vegetarian and non-vegetarian starters were both a limp looking salad (the non vegetarian one had a few slices of duck and some mushrooms on top of it) - not impressive - but for my main course I had steak with goose liver, which was very good indeed. Goose liver is another Hungarian speciality so I feel I did well.

Also in the restaurant was a "fellow from Cambridge" - I think the restaurant misunderstood as we found out later that this was in fact a "fellow, from Cambridge" i.e. he had been there once - who was filming for a Channel 5 show on culture in Budapest. Culture sounds a little unlikely for channel 5, but it is certainly low budget TV.

I was out with the last remaining survivors on Monday, which was a mistake. I only realised at 4am that if I had to get up at 7am to catch a plane (which I did), I would only get 3 hours sleep. I am no longer used to getting by on so little, I was very worried when I went to sleep. Still, not drinking helped and although very surprised when my alarm went off I survived Tuesday with a minimum of discomfort. There were more "afternoon tea" cakes at breakfast, I had 5 and then had to stop as I felt very sick.

Wednesday: And back to Sydney

I have discovered the key to long haul flying: sleep as much as you possibly can, even if you are going to sleep straight away when you get to your destination. The only reason I went to sleep on my last flight was because I couldn't keep my eyes open and I was still knackered when I got home at 9:30pm.

I had booked tickets for the cinema on Friday - it was the Sydney film festival while I was away and this was the only day we could make. The film was being shown in the State Theatre, which is a 1920s cinema that I have wanted to visit for ages. They don't usually show films so this seemed like an excellent opportunity to relive the past. However I was too tired to make it out on Friday night so I shall have to wait until next year.

I started to feel better on Saturday: another post to follow about that...


Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Weekend in the Blue Mountains

We finally managed to get out and see a bit of Oz last weekend: the Blue Mountains, just outside Sydney. One thing crossed off our list of places to go!

We travelled down Friday evening. I met Sean at Mount Druitt at the end of his working day and we drove on to the Blue Mountains. Mount Druitt is about mid-way between where we live (i.e. central Sydney) and the Blue Mountains. It's probably slightly closer to the mountains in distance but because you have to come off the motorway it takes a little longer to get out there.

We stayed in the Hydro Majestic, which is a turn of the century (i.e. 19th -> 20th) hotel that has recently been refurbished. It was quite expensive for Aussie prices, but we chose it because it seemed to have a nice lounge (in fact it had several) and a decent restaurant.

We were a little disappointed with the restaurant on the first night mainly because the selection was quite small although my soup, despite being very hot (which is indispensable), was not particularly exciting and neither was the pilaff that came with my fish. Sean's crab ravioli and venison was very nice though, and I can confirm this because (owing to the limited menu) I had the same thing on Sunday night. My dessert of millefeuille was very poor. It was described as chocolate mousse between layers of puff pastry and this is exactly what is was. Neither of the ingredients was anything to write home about.

Still all was forgiven at breakfast as I think I can declare without any doubt that this was the best hotel buffet breakfast I have ever had. They had whole fresh fruit (apples and oranges), stewed fruit (this turned out to be less interesting), some tinned fruit, a fresh fruit platter (mainly melon and pineapple), fruit yoghurt and home-made muffins. The home-made muffins (blueberry or chocolate) were gorgeous, I can't tell you the number of times I have been disappointed by hotel breakfast buffet muffins. They also had a whole load of stuff I didn't get round to trying (cold meat, pastries, hot breakfast). But the best thing of all was a 1960s waffle machine, in which you could make your own waffles.

Saturday: It rains.

Rain was pelting down on Friday night as we drove to the Blue Mountains but, ever the optimist, I expected it to stop when we woke up on Saturday.

Sure enough, the first thing we did notice when we looked out of the window on Saturday morning was not rain. However, it wasn't anything else either. The whole of the mountains were completely covered in mist. On closer examination it was also drizzling.

We abandoned plans of going on exciting walks around the mountains and went into Katoomba, the main town, to see what was there. We went to a tea room and chocolate shop that I had found on the internet and found a fantastic bookshop. The man at the counter remarked on the variety of books we were buying: Sean had found a backgammon book, a gambling book and is trying to learn statistics and so had a statistics book as well, whereas I had added some classic novels to the mix. In general the selection of games and backgammon books was very good in all the bookshops we visited in the Blue Mountains; I have no idea why this should be.



Bookshop

The rain got heavier. We went back to the hotel.

We were still recovering from having had to work all week so we had afternoon tea (very good) and then went to sleep before having a late dinner at 9pm. I had a big disappointment that evening - I ordered fish of the day (which was salmon) only to be presented with the same baby barramundi that I had had on Friday. I mentioned this to the waiter, who offered to change it but said the wait would be 20 minutes (we didn't have time). On the plus side, it was prepared differently and was actually very tasty, and I was further reassured by the waiter coming over to apologise (he had clearly been hunted down and told to make amends). The chef came out and spoke to us at the end of the meal, which was also comforting.

We watched the England match in our room - no one was watching it in the lounge and we didn't want to disturb them. The match started at 11pm our time. I can't imagine that anyone who is reading this doesn't know what the result was....

Sunday: It drizzles.

We were more determined to try a walk today, but when we set out in the car it was drizzling and (albeit less than yesterday) misty. On our way to Leura where the chosen walk was to start, we found a scenic blue mountains circular road and decided that maybe we would have a little drive instead. We found Echo Point this way, which gives a good view of the three sisters rocks. We parked the car and got out to have a quick look. It stopped drizzling and we ended up embarking on a walk (all the tracks are clearly marked so it's very easy to go on impromptu rather than planned walks as long as you don't mind sharing your route with other tourists) but we had to turn back quite soon as we'd only put enough money in the parking meter for an hour.



The "Three Sisters" rock formation

We went and had a wander round Leura next. Leura was less interesting than Katoomba (one small bookshop: we bought a copy of the latest Eoin Colfer book on CD) and what's more all the tea shops were jam packed with tourists leaving no room for us. We had to go back to the hotel to have tea.

We had an early dinner so we could go and watch the England versus Australia rugby friendly (billed in Australia as World Cup grudge match); Sean needed to know what happened for Staff Ribbing (either giving or receiving) on Tuesday.

The fish was baby barramundi (again) so I had the crab ravioli and venison (Sean's meal on Friday), which were both excellent. For dessert I ordered Strawberry Romanov, which I was expecting to be a kind of French tarte aux fraises but turned out to be strawberries and cream in a pastry basket. It was surprisingly nice considering. The service was quite slow (overall it was very variable, we got off early on Saturday for the football but everything came much slower tonight) and we missed the first 25 minutes of the rugby. Another quirk of the service was exposed: I had noticed that some guests seemed to receive canopes (and I thought I even saw one couple with a bread basket, but maybe they ordered that) but I assumed that they were on a more expensive package (or maybe not on a package at all). However, on Sunday evening we were seated further into the main restaurant and received cucumber with horse radish cream (these were not too bad considering I don't like horse radish or cucumber, but they seemed to cancel each other out). We seemed to have been upgraded.

England were slaughtered in the rugby (the ribbing will be directed at Sean rather than coming from him). I think the final score was 36-3 or something similar.

Monday: The sun shines and we realise what we have been missing.

We had been told that the views from the hotel were spectacular. We had not seen any evidence of this - up until now it had appeared that the view from all windows was remarkable similar to the view from an aeroplane window when passing through a cloud.

On Monday morning the sun was shining and all the mists had cleared. The view was amazing.



View from the hotel window

We went out and attempted to follow a planned walk but we got distracted again. While driving to the start point, we passed a sign saying Katoomba Falls and went to investigate. We we ended up following a guided walk down the mountain (and underneath the waterfall) for about two hours. Ahead of us were some American teenage boys, who jumped the safety railing to investigate whenever possible, including at the top of the waterfall where the fall was pretty large. You can see them in the next photo. Look for the small white blobs.



Small American boys and large waterfall

Spurred on by this, Sean jumped a barrier at the bottom of the waterfall to have his picture taken a bit closer.



Sean behind the barriers

We then found we could continue for another 2 hours on the walk. Strangely enough it turned out to be the walk we were planning on going on; we had just started at the other end. This was immensely fortunate as we had started at the interesting end and gone down some very steep steps. We did not intend to re-ascend the steps; we got the scenic railway back up to the top.



Scenic railway

We stopped in Katoomba on the way back and perused another (not quite as good but still pretty satisfying) bookshop. Sean found a backgammon book by Barclay Cooke, an Economics text book by Stiglitz (for me) at a bargainous price of $5.50 and I selected the collected works of Milton and a more modern poetry book by Mailer. I haven't read any poetry for ages and this looked quite exciting.

When we got back to the hotel, we read by the fire in the lounge until dinner. I was still on Notre-Dame de Paris by Hugo, which I had bought at the first bookshop. I haven't been reading many novels recently (too busy trying to improve myself) and this was a classic page turner. Why are non-fiction books not like this?

I had booked the last night as an addition to the original booking as I had thought it would be easiest to go back to Sydney on Monday. It turned out that Sydney was quite a long way away and we were better off getting up early and going straight to work Tuesday morning (I got the train back from Mount Druitt). When I booked this extra night, I was given a cheaper B&B price so I went for that.

Given that we were not booked into the hotel and had already made a dent in the limited menu we made a vague effort to go to a new restaurant, in particular a modern Australian and a French restaurant. There was no answer from either (perhaps because of the Bank Holiday) and we resigned ourselves to eating at the hotel. There were advantages to this: we had to be up very early on Tuesday. The food was not bad either, I had pasta with prosciutto and sun dried tomatoes, followed by a good piece of steak and Sean went back to the classic crab/venison combination.

We got up very early Tuesday morning (only 15 minutes in advance of when we would get up usually but it seemed earlier as we were on holiday), missed breakfast (oh poor muffinless me) and made it back in time for Sean to start work at 8:30am. We both had a great weekend and are planning on going back. Hopefully it will be sunny for the whole holiday next time!


Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Highlights from the weekend

Our excitement at the weekend didn't end with the casino trip. Oh no.



What we bought at the market this time


  • Saturday am was the Good Living Growers Market. I avoided buying anything from the fudge stall (even though they had a new date cake to tempt me with, but it was too large!). However we managed to get some rhubarb, sweetcorn, bananas, dates (I almost missed the stall, I would have been sad), duck, snails (! with shells and tongs), French cakes (served by a lady with a French accent who had trouble adding up how much it cost, which added a certain, well we could say "je ne sais quoi", to the whole experience) and some cheese.

  • Saturday afternoon we went to the Maritime Museum and saw: a 1970's Australian Gunboat, a submarine, a replica of Captain Cook's Endeavor and a display about Vikings. Walking round the boats gives you a feel for how claustrophobic it must have been to live on them (especially the sub). The Endeavor was manned by lots of helpful old Sea Dogs who were very knowledgeable about the ship and crew.

  • On Saturday evening we found out that the duck was still frozen and so postponed our duck/snail extravaganza until Sunday and ordered take-away curry. I had fish curry and it was good.

  • Sunday afternoon we went on a walk over the harbour bridge and back. Good views and I like walking. Unfortunately, to get Sean to agree to come I have had to promise to spend the same length of time that the walk took doing "Backgammon Study". We ran out of time on Sunday for this so this is still tbc.

  • By Sunday evening the duck still wasn't defrosted so we had to go out disappointedly and buy some lamb. We ate the snails but couldn't put them in the oven as it was full of lamb and so didn't bother putting them in their shells. The were very unexciting. Next time they will definitely be going in the shells for the true snail experience.

  • On Monday we got to eat the duck. It went in the oven for 4.5 hours and was spectacular. Next month we will have to remember that it takes ages to defrost, buy something else for eating at the weekend (they also had Guinea fowl and venison at the market) and have duck on Monday.



Friday, June 02, 2006

Star City

We just made it to the casino.

After we enjoyed our meal so much at Astral last Monday, we went back there for dinner this evening. Admittedly our choice was rather influenced by the fact that it was tipping it down and as I believe I have mentioned the casino is outside our back door.

We ordered the a la carte rather than the tasting menu or indeed the $1000 tasting menu, which included the obvious things to push the bill up: caviar, lobster, fois gras, French champagne (a good way to waste money in Australia). I had a very interesting smoked salmon and tomato tea to start, which I found to be more like soup than tea (I suspect the description "soup" was dismissed as not sufficiently exciting) and came with a gold leaf wrapped quail's egg. The flavours were good though. Sean had the lobster raviolo with a treacle and ginger sauce. It looked very good.

We both had the crispy skinned barramundi to follow, which came with oxtail tortollini and carrot and anise puree (surprisingly nice). Sean finished with a cheese platter and a good cheese platter it was too: 6 cheeses (from a choice of about 25), fruit and nut bread, biscuit things and fruit and nut chutney type things (including a date. I ate that.).

I had a bit of a pudding dilemma, but opted for praline cinq cent feuilles with fruit compote and chestnut ice-cream. The flavours went well together but the chestnut ice cream (which was the reason I plumped for this particular dessert) was a disappointment on its own, tasting mainly of sugar.

I had some coffee after dinner for the first time in a long time. Whenever I smell coffee, I think I must start drinking it again and this particular coffee was a "top shelf" one. I don't know what it means, but it sounded good. Unfortunately it didn't taste good - it was too strong for me and made me feel a bit ill. I think I shall stick to sniffing other people's in future.

We had taken our passports with us in case we were still awake at the end of the meal. We wandered down to the casino but clearly looked respectable enough to not warrant a passport inspection and were allowed straight in.

As we had been warned by our dining compatriots on Monday, the casino is a little tacky. My previous impression of the casino having been based on the white tablecloths of Astral, I think I had underestimated this. The casino was at least half filled with pokies (poker machines: pictures of cards are preferred to pictures of fruit here) and there was an almost continuous voice-over through the tannoy system, which was very irritating.

Sean had come up with a game over dinner for us to play in the casino. Admittedly it is not his game, he borrowed from someone else, however it is absolutely wicked.

You decide on how much you are prepared to lose, in our case this was $100. The stake was $5 so this equated to 20 goes at the roulette table. You then bet one chip at a time on number 8 until you either win or run out of money. Sounds boring huh? But that is not the game! The game is that you have to whisper with your compatriot every time before you bet on number 8 as if you are deciding where to play. If you run out of money you just shake your head and walk away, but if you win you should have amazed the gamblers round the table with your ability to pick a winner.

In our case it worked even better than we had hoped. It was quite fun just betting on number 8 anyway. We were too far down the table so we couldn't reach and had to keep throwing it across and asking the croupier to move it for us. They changed the croupier and the new one got used to putting our chip on 8 for us. The people at our table got bored and went away, which I thought was a shame as they would miss it when 8 came up, but just as some new people game over, it did! This was brilliant as it looked even more impressive to the newcomers as they had only seen the one spin! And best of all, the manager came over to see whether we were cheating or not!

We came out of the casino $120 up, although on average we will lose about $3 each time we stake $100. Still $3 is pretty cheap for a game as good as this!

Inspired by the casino, Sean has decided to learn how to card count in blackjack so he can make money, but I don't know how far he's going to get with this.


Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh I love a good strong coffee!

Was your fish ok? Colleagues keep telling me theirs turned out overcooked.

The cheese platter sounded great, but I'm like you: 99% of the time I will go for pud.

Your roulette game is a funny one too.

11:36 AM  
Blogger Zoe said...

Hi Helen

The fish was very nice - it certainly wasn't dry at all and the skin was very crispy.

In general I prefer it when the menu insists I have pudding and cheese!

Zoe

6:40 PM