Czechesotans: Roadtrip

BW's parents just had one heckuva 40th anniversary celebration - they toasted four decades of marriage (well done!) on a Viking River Cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest.

The only way to travel, say BW's dad, who is now investigating boat trips in China and Russia. He just needs to retire from his job as a foreman electrician now so he can spare the time. Speaking of retirement, my newly work-free parents just spent a month volunteering in a national park/ghost town in Montana this Fall and are now headed to do the same in Kentucky as campground hosts.

Our parents are the coolest.

I can't wait for retirement.

Anyhow, after work a few Fridays ago, BW and I set off from Prague in a car we borrowed from our pal the Glaswegian, bound for Budapest to pick up his parents at the terminus of their cruise.

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DRIVE TO BUDAPEST ON A FRIDAY AFTERNOON. I repeat: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO DRIVE TO BUDAPEST ON A FRIDAY AFTERNOON.

Traffic was jammed all the way out of Prague, and an accident meant us waiting still as statues for upwards of an hour on the highway. The 5-hour trip took about 7.5.

But Budapest was as brilliant as ever, especially so being gussied up in sparkly lights and Christmas stalls.

We hit some favorites in a the roughly day and a half we were there, including...

- Cheery Christmas Markets at Vörösmarty square

- Funky Erzsébetváros District with its kerts (ruin pubs) like Szimpla pictured below, Synagogue and alternative hand-made markets

- Ultra-grandiose New York Cafe, worth a $6 cup of coffee just to see the inside

- Sobering House of Terror Museum, the former headquarters for both Nazi and Communist parties in Budapest

- Walking the river for castle views (As Mom and Pop W visited the castle the day before we arrived, we didn't go up Buda Hill)

No dips in Turkish baths this time, but the quick city break was lovely, nonetheless.

And on the way back to Prague, we stopped at one of our favorite dining spots in the Czech Republic, the fresh fish restaurant at Hotel Jelinkova in Velké Meziříčí. My belly can't recommend this place highly enough.

The fish below would probably disagree with me, though.

Related posts on Budapest: Hairy start to Budapest (we should know better than to drive there by now), BudaBEST and Pest Peculiarities.

Another visit to Restaurant Jelinkova HERE.

We (BW, Frenchwoman and I) arrived in one piece to our home exchange in Budapest!

Reasons we should not have arrived in one piece to our home exchange in Budapest:

1) Car that our friend Frenchwoman rented had a big gash in tire and we had to wait for the agency to fix it, losing a half-day's travel time

2) J-dog was given a whole sausage by a well-meaning Czech waiter the night before our trip and had stomach issues on the drive we will refrain from writing about. Thankfully Frenchwoman's rental car stayed clean

3) We stood on the Hungarian border for what seemed like ages, waiting to purchase a required vignette (road permit)

4) The journey was heaped with road construction

5) We forgot things - BW's sunglasses, my camera's SD card (thank goodness for fancy phones)

6) GPS sent us driving in circles around a crowded city center, wanting us to go the wrong way down a one-way street to our destination

But we made it. And it's marvelous! And our eclectic home exchange flat is smack in the middle of the action and is floor-to-roof full of books, albeit in foreign languages. Frenchwoman dropped us and went to see friends she'd met while teaching in England, and we put our sightseeing goggles on.

A few sights from the first half-day:

- Central Market