We finally surfaced at midday although I’d been up on numerous occasions to take two ibuprofen, two paracetemol, one berocca and a gallon of water. I wondered if the others felt as bad as I did. Maice said she was fine, so was it just me? We regrouped around the kitchen table where we ate the leftovers from our previous breakfast and held a post-mortem on the nights events. It was a consensus of opinion that it was up there with one of the best New Years Eve we’ve all had ......such fun, just a shame about the fuzzy head! We tried to work out how many bottles of champagne, beer and white wine we’d gone through......a lot, was all we could remember.
Tonight we were going on a wine tasting cruise along the Danube. You’d think we’d consumed enough alcohol after last night, but no, and as this was prebooked we had to go.....what a hardship! As it was now about one thirty in the afternoon we decided that once we were out we were out and wouldn’t come back until after our cruise, which started at 7pm. We thought it would be a good idea to walk to the cruise meeting point first, just to see where it was, so we made our way down the hill, regrouped under the lamppost and followed Mark and his phone map on an impromptu hike around the city. It seemed we were walking round in circles for at least an hour with Mark asking for directions in various establishments along the way. Well, who’d have believed it, we finally found the meeting place next door to the Four Seasons Hotel of all places. It only took about 8,000 steps to get there!!
All this walking had made us a bit peckish so off we went in search of a traditional Hungarian restaurant. We found one but having stood outside and deliberating about whether to go in or not we decided to move on and found another traditional restaurant we really liked the look of. It was full, there was no room at the inn, so as seems to be the norm with us, we retraced our steps and dined in the first restaurant we came to!
We finally made our way to the cruise pick-up point where what seemed like a hundred people followed the smallest guide ever through the streets, across the busy roads and along the embankment until we came to the boat where we had to wait in a queue to board. I must say we were very impressed, it was a long boat and looked very fancy inside, like one of those Viking Cruise boats, it was all lit up and looked very inviting. How exciting. We were wondering where we’d be sitting, on the lower or upper deck, we didn’t really mind though, it was all an experience. Everyone was given a glass of Prosecco when they boarded but when Mark produced our tickets we were told we were on the wrong boat! Ha, ha, we thought they were joking, but no, we had to walk through the big fancy boat to get to ours which was a quarter of the size and we didn’t even get a glass of Prosecco. In comparison, our boat was very basic but there was an ‘ensemble’ of three musicians to keep us entertained; a violinist, a pianist and a man with a very big double bass. The boat set sail, the ‘ensemble’ started playing and there began our wine tasting tour. In between our tasting Maice was serenaded by the violinist, in fact so was Brian. We all thought it was hilarious although Brian didn’t seem too enamoured! A little later the violinist returned with a 20 Euro note stuffed in between his strings and after he’d finished serenading us with his version of ‘I’m getting married in the morning’ he proceeded to tap the Euro with his bow. It was rather an awkward moment, we shuffled in our seats, we glanced at each other until finally he walked away. Phew! We held an emergency regroup round the table. What should we do? To tip or not to tip, that was the question? We all had our say and eventually gave the band 3,000 hufs......well they had kept us entertained and we did rekindle ‘The Pearl’ dance to their music. And of course we did have a sing song when they played Edelweiss, out of tune of course, and then we bobbed up and down to ‘do, re, mi’ each of us taking a do, a ra, a mi.....you get the drift. We all managed to bob up and down in perfect timing until it came to Brian. There seemed to be a delayed reaction, like he was on the other side of the world and there with a time-delay, for when it came to his turn to ‘la’ and bob up and down he executed it in a slow motion sequence! We finally finished the song on time ready for another rendition of Auld Lang Syne.
After our sing song we then resorted to ‘roaring’. Having listened to Ed Milliband interviewing Barney Greenway, lead singer of Napalm Death about their 1.316 second song which contains four words in a roar, we all decided to give it a go. I think Maice won hands down for producing the most authentic roar. Roaring then gave way to trying to sound like Chewbacca from Star Wars. We were all practicing our chewbacca sound, very badly, so set ourselves a challenge to practice overnight and bring our chewbacca sounds to the breakfast table. How we come up with these ideas we’ll never know!
Feeling rather weary by now we made our way home, on foot of course, roaring all the way and trying to perfect our chewbacca sounds as we went.
We aim to be out early tomorrow morning as we’re off to the Gellert Thermal Baths and Spa which is at the bottom of our hill. We can see the steam rising over the wall from the outdoor spa so we know they must be hot. Can’t wait.....we so need a bit of pampering after all the walking we’ve done so far. Ah, what bliss!
ROAR xxxxx