In our final remaining days in Budapest, we've really done our best to make the most of the time. Last night Carridy, Karen, Rod and I returned to the cafe at Fisherman's Bastian, which I believe I wrote about in one of my first posts. Once again, we were the only people in the cafe, so we ordered bottles of wine as the string trio simply played around our table.
Karen is so completely enamored by Attila, the violinist, that when she kept saying she was bringing her husband back here, we strongly advised against it...John might not appreciate the way Karen gazes at Attila! A few of us also attended some folk dance houses/lessons and tested out our new moves.
Today was our final day trip outside of Budapest. We visited Szentendre, an 18th century town with five Orthodox churches alone, which is now an artist colony-type village. We saw loads of Roman ruins and went to the medieval royal palace in Visegrad. On our way to dinner at the Renaissance Restaurant, we walked past the tower that Vlad Tepes (more commonly known as Dracula) was held prisoner for ten years after having killed some traveling Turkish emmisaries. The Sultan wanted to start a war with Hungary over the deaths, so King Mattias had Dracula arrested. The Renaissance Restaurant was exactly as advertised. We needed a king and queen of the table. Rod became king by default, he is the only man in the program, and everyone seemed to not only walk past the queen's throne, but gave a wide berth around it, so I sat down. Can't say it was a real upgrade from my previous princess status (king and queen didn't even get served first!) but I did have nice arm rests.
I guess I'll now have to figure out a way to work up to empress or goddess...
Awesomely done, Ames. Looks like you are having dramatically more fun than required to fulfill the scholarship requirements. I wouldn't have it any other way.
ReplyDeleteThanks! Tonight we went to a wine cellar and tasting, for which we were asked to pay 150 Kc (~$7.50) for the wine tasting because I guess seven years ago there was a complaint that US tax payer dollars was being used to pay for Fulbright participants to get drunk. Well, we all know that the US gov't chooses to use tax payer dollars to pay for more extravagant things than 16 teachers to have a Moravian wine tasting experience, but I'm also not complaining to cover the cost of something associated with this experience...it has been AMAZING!!!
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