DAY 118 SATURDAY JULY 21 BUDAPEST

Yesterday was a heavy day with three different adventures.  Today we planned to take an easier trip so took a Railjet (one of our favourite trains- they give us Kitkats and New York Times) to Budapest - a 3 hour trip.  We read they get 24 million visitors a year so hoped we would find something interesting. we had done very little research and only had 2 or 3 hours there, so we found that the Danube was a long way from the station so the 2 hour cruise as ruled out.  The station seemed to be very neglected with temporary chipboard barriers all over the place and not much evidence of renovation in progress. In contrast at Vienna South Station they are halfway through building a magnificent new station which is due in 2013.  None of the shops looked willing to accept euros so we swapped 40 euros for 11200 florints.  We are finding it difficult to be tolerant of smokers as they are near us so much and in Budapest there were a high percentage smoking continuously.  The butts are everywhere you go.

We looked for a cafe and eventually found a couple a long way from the station.  The main choices next to the station were Maccas, Burger King and KFC. The McCafe served us well.  some of the streets looked quite lovely.

We found a beautiful church with a statue of Elizabeth in front and when we looked through the locked grill we could see it was all set up for a Saturday wedding.

Hope it was a happy time.  Malcolm developed sudden gastric pain so we returned to Macdonald's for relief.  Taking a second look at the station we saw it had a great facade

and a colourful vestibule.

Outside was our transport statue of the day.

There is a picture of a train on the front of the plinth and the man's name is Baross, which may also be the name of the station.  A quick googol would clarify if we were motivated.  Probably there are many fine things we could have seen if we had ventured further and stayed longer.  Ver quiet trip home on the train in a nearly empty carriage.  We needed an easier day.