At our regrouping the previous evening Maice and I offered to sort this mornings breakfast out so true to our word we were up early and ‘quelle surprise’ ........we happened upon an extra body reclining on the lounge sofa! On further inspection it looked very much like Mark but this ‘doppelgänger’ was stuffed with pillows. Very amusing, and it did give us some hints on the sort of evening they’d had without us girls! Apparently they’d frequented a few watering holes but in the last one Bri was approached by a ‘lady of the night’ so they beat a hasty retreat and caught a taxi home. One by one everyone turned up at the breakfast table. Dianne, looking a bit worse for wear sat down last. We gave her an emergency ‘berrocca’ to accelerate the hangover recovery process and hoped a spot of breakfast would put the colour back in her cheeks.
Today we were booked in at 4pm for Afternoon Tea at the Four Seasons Hotel....oh yes, we can do posh when we want to and it was going to be a very busy day. We set off down the hill at 10.45am and made our way to the hop-on hop-off bus stop. We were off to visit the Terror Museum, which had come highly recommended and, if we had time, the Jewish Synagogue. We quickly popped in to the Grand Market where Pearl and Mark bought some paprika and Maice and I bought some local honeycomb honey, which looked lovely, for our friend Jane. Waiting for the bus we were advised to ‘hop-on’ to the single decker green bus which would take us to the Terror Museum or wait twenty minutes for the next bus. We hopped on and set off, past the Ferris wheel, the station, the Synagogue then back again until we came to a stop where we were advised to all ‘hop-off’ and ‘hop-on’ to the big red bus in front which would be leaving in ten minutes whilst the green bus we were on would be leaving in twenty minutes. We went to ‘hop-on’ to the red bus but it was full so we hopped back onto the green bus which we had just hopped off!!! Such fun! We regrouped on our bus seats and deliberated our next move. We had twenty minutes to kill. What to do? The only thing we could think of was to take some selfies, so that’s exactly what we did.....!
Finally the bus moved, driving us around the centre, past all the places we’d seen at least ten times before, until we arrived at the Terror Museum. We encountered a very strange young man at the turnstile when we went to produce our tickets. First he told Pearl she couldn’t take her bag in and we had to take a locker, then he tried to tell us we couldn’t enter the exhibition. We think he was trying to be funny but we didn’t quite get the joke. The Museum commemorates the victims of terror between 1944 - 1956 and as its name depicts was very sombre. In order to access the cells you were taken down in the slowest ever lift, it was almost pitch black and a harrowing video was nshown the entire journey down. If we weren’t feeling depressed before the journey down we certainly were when we exited the lift. It was a very sobering exhibition but we were glad to get out outside and see daylight. We didn’t have time for a visit to the Synagogue and we were in desperate need of some cheeriness and as time was of the essence, Bri-Mark went back home to change into their kilts for Afternoon Tea and us girlies found a champagne bar and enjoyed a bottle of wine and a pizza. Both were gorgeous and just what we needed.
We arrived at The Four Seasons at 3.45pm and headed straight to the loo’s for a quick titivation and to take a couple of selfies.....and why not! Bri-Mark, both looking very dapper in their kilts, had arrived early and were enjoying their beers whilst listening to the pianist playing on the grand piano. We ordered a bottle of wine, no expense spared here, although I think we did opt for the cheapest on the menu, and then ordered our choice of tea; White Blossom for Mark, Lemon Mango for me, English Breakfast for Brian, Jasmine for Maice, Darjeeling for Pearl and Earl Grey for Dianne. We tucked into our one teeny-weeny one inch square sandwich and our teeny-tiny flan and our tiddly-tiny cakes and, believe it or not we had some left over which Pearl secretly stuffed into a plastic bag to take home with us. I’m sure they would have prepared a posh ‘doggy bag’ for us if we’d asked.
We had advised the Maitre’d when we booked that Maice was a vegetarian and towards the end of our tea a very apologetic M’d brought out her selections. Better late than never!. Being on our best behaviour we didn’t feel we could participate in any Roaring or Chewbacca impressions so took to the more sedentary past-time of ‘teapot smelling’. This involved passing all the teapots around in an anti-clockwise direction, placing ones nose as far into the pot as possible and taking a big sniff. It was quite strange actually as none of the aromas bore any resemblance to their name. In fact some of them smelt quite revolting. Having got all the teapots mixed up due to a pile-up in front of Pearl we then tried to allocate the correct pot to the right person. We weren’t sure but we think we sussed it. We paid the bill, took some more photos in the foyer and waved goodbye to Bri-Mark who were heading back home by taxi whereas us girlies were walking back, picking up some groceries on the way for a light supper and rolls for the plane.
We met Lita, one of the owner’s, who came up to see us so we could pay her for the apartment. High finance ensued as hufs and euros changed hands, debts were paid to Mark and finally we were all sorted. We had no hufs left, and what euros we had would go towards future holidays.
Pizza’s in the oven, wine and beer glasses filled, we sat around the kitchen table on this, our last evening in Budapest. The Scottish contingent had a taxi booked for 3.45am, yes that is three forty five in the morning. No time for breakfast then so a production line was put in place to make rolls for the airport/plane. Mark cut the cheese, Brian cut the rolls, I filled them, Maice wrapped them, though she was getting into a bit of a pickle with the cling film and needed assistance from Mark, proving that some men can multi-task and Pearl and Dianne offered encouragement! The Pizza’s came out of the oven and the five of us dived in......Pearl had announced earlier that she was going to abstain from eating pizza......something about not feeling hungry and a diet. She succumbed however when the second pizza came out of the oven, honestly for frozen pizza they were truly delicious.
Sitting round the table we YouTubed how to do a ‘Chewbacca’ and proceeded to try it out...in unison! I managed to record our efforts......the jury is still deliberating as to whether we sound like him or not!
Maice and I checked in on-line for our flight back to Bristol but were allocated rubbish seats both in the middle of a row at the front and back of the plane so it took us at least forty minutes to change them, at a cost of £26 I might add. Honestly, Ryanair are no longer the ‘budget’ airline they claim to be.....its amazing how all these extra’s mount up!
Soon it was time for bed.......everyone had to be up at silly o’clock the next morning. They didn’t believe us but Maice and I said we’d be up to wave them cheery-bye. How sad, our wonderful holiday was coming to an end!
Night all.....xxxxxx