Budapest...Part 2 of a Several Part Trip

Some say that Hungaroring is not very fan-friendly.  Too far from town, too hard to get there, too hot, etc. To this we politely reply "bunk".  Well, OK, yes, it's hot.

The city's done a great job with this race.  Here's what you do.  Walk to the metro station.  Ride the metro to the bus station.  Take a free bus to the track (it runs every few minutes).  Walk through the cooling stations, grab a free bag of cold water, head for the viewing area, and cover your head with an umbrella (for the sun, the rain part comes later).  At the end of the day, reverse course, except stop for a beer on the way back from the metro.

Our view of the track:

Our tickets were in the Bronze 1 stands.  These seats are on the other side of the track from the garages, but it's up higher and there seemed to be a breeze most of the time.  If you look at these stands on TV, they look like there's very few people with seats and lots of general admission folks standing around.  Actually, there are no general admission people around the Bronzes...all those people standing around have seats but aren't in them.  Pati saw our seats once but we never sat there either.  We sat on a wall at the top end of the stand for the entire weekend.

Just before the race started, a storm came through, thunder and lightning and the whole bit, but our side of the track got the least of it.  About 10 minutes of rain and it was over.  The race was great.  Here's Lewis Hamilton (British, Mercedes),  Fernando Alonzo (Spanish, Ferrari), and Daniel Ricciardo (Aussie, Red Bull) in the late laps, racing for the podium:

Ricciardo passed both of them in the final laps to win his second race.  His first race?  Montreal, and we were there.  Lewis' car caught on fire during Qualy 1 and he never set a time, started from the pits, but still wound up on the podium, the jerk.  Also there was some controversy about team orders telling Hamilton to let team mate Nico Rosberg pass him...he refused.

So here's live action from the Hungaroring!

We'd say that this is one of the best races we've ever seen!

Budapest..Part One of a Several Part Trip

This trip started out to be a visit to Budapest for the Formula 1 race at the Hungaroring.  Then it grew like Topsy into a 14-day river cruise, a visit to Amsterdam, a week of hiking at our favorite place in Epen, Holland, and a meet-up with Steve and Angie for another Formula 1 race.

So to begin, we arrived in Budapest on July 23, 2014 and were met by our driver.  We stayed in a serviced apartment (air conditioning! washing machine! refrigerator! microwave! close to everything!) at the 7Seasons Apartments, the management of which was kind enough to dispatch a "limo" for a very reasonable fee. Speaking of reasonable, Hungary is.  A trip to the supermarket that would have cost $35 - $40 U.S. for wine, water, some food, etc. only ran about $17 U.S.

Budapest turned out to be just as great as everyone says.  Our first full day, we took off on foot to see the Buda side with its Fisherman's Bastion area.

The Parliament building from the Bastion:

The all-day hike also took us along the river on the Pest side.  This is where all the river cruise ships dock, and it's amazing how many of them were around.  At one point, there had to be at least a dozen, stacked up three abreast.  There are some interesting life-size bronze statues along the river walk:

We also headed over to Hero's Square, where we found the original Anonymous:

There's a huge market in Budapest, often called the "iron cathedral".

Here, we had heard, was where we would find the Budapest Belly Buster, called langosh.  This is a potato-based dough, deep-fat fried and traditionally served for breakfast with cheese, garlic, or both.  These days, they'll fix it up almost like a pizza with lots of toppings.  The stuff is wonderful and we really overdid it, but at least we had the sense to not go back the next day.  Not that we didn't want to.  Besides langosh, the vegetable stands at the market were so tempting!

On a more sobering note, near the Parliament Building are the bronze shoes.  This memorial is dedicated to the many people who were killed by the Arrow Cross Militia during 1944 and 1945.  The Arrow Cross was basically the Hungarian Nazi Party, and while in power, they were dedicated to ridding Budapest of Jews, confining them to ghettos and deporting them to work and concentration camps.  Over 80,000 died at Auschwitz, while 10,000 to 15,000 people were murdered outright.  At one point, battalions raided the ghettos looking for Jews who were supposedly partisans or saboteurs...about 200 were rounded up, marched onto the bridges over the Danube, shot, and pushed into the river.  The shoes say it all.

An after-dinner stroll rounded out the trip:

Before boarding our ship, we had a lot of leftover Hungarian cash (forints) and we had to figure out a way to spend it.  A case of wine was purchased for the cruise.