OK, I'm not sure what happened, but hopefully now we're up and running again. So. Movie set. Complete with tanks:
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| Back view of Buda Castle |
Dad and Angel were hungry right about now, and Dad kept asking if we wanted to buy something to eat (code for: he wants to buy something to eat). There was a Chimney Cake stand that offered free samples, so we tasted it and thought it was yummy enough to buy. They make it in 5 different flavors: vanilla, nuts, cinnamon, coconut, chocolate. Mom hates chocolate, I hate nuts, Dad hates cinnamon and coconut.
Which pretty much left only vanilla:
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| Happy now? You got something to eat! |
Castle Hill is a vast complex, which in medieval times would have had a whole separate section for servants and the like. Now, it's a quaint village to stroll around, with lots of restaurants for tourists to lounge about, people-watching. There's a church:
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| Matthias Church |
And next to the church is the Fisherman's Bastion, a relatively new building built in the "fortress" style:
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| Fisherman's Bastion |
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| Fisherman's Bastion |
From Fisherman's Bastion, there's excellent views of the Danube.
Dad saw an ice cream stand and he wanted to buy some. We had chimney cake 5 minutes ago, peeps. He's like a little kid, I swear. He wanted vanilla, but I made him buy pistachio. Hey, if you're gonna buy something, buy something that they have to put effort into making (Adding vanilla extract = not hard. Chopping pistachios = relatively more labor-intensive). Mom cracked up so hard about it, she had tears in her eyes.
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| Oiy, how hungry are you??? We're eating dinner soon! |
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| And a little rat comes along to steal his ice cream cone. Pistachio, she can't resist. |
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| A view of the entrance of Buda Castle at street level |
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| Street level Buda Castle |
For dinner, we decided to have an early dinner at 5pm so we could make the opera (I had bought opera tickets 2 months before for the 7pm showing). Voros restaurant is a restaurant that had great reviews on TripAdvisor and Mom saw an article about it on UDN, so it was on our hit list:
Mom ordered Hungarian Pilsner beer:
And Dad ordered Hawaiian coffee. Hawaiian. Seriously. When in Rome... do as the Hawaiians do?
It was coffee with whipped cream and Bacardi Rum, which Dad said was too bitter for his taste.
BUT. The real reason why we came here is for the foie gras everybody's raving about:
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| Foie Gras with Poached Pear, Honey, Blueberry Sauce and Salad |
The poached pear worked wonderfully with the salad, and the foie gras was superb with the blueberry sauce and honey.
Mom and Dad ordered the rib-eye steak topped with foie gras and black truffles:
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| Holy cow (or duck), look at the size of that baby! |
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| OMG I want some right now!!! |
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| Black truffles *sigh* Can I stay here forever? |
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| Yummmm...I'm salivating. I want it again! |
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| Angel's plate. She had 5 pieces in total of foie gras, and I had a measly 4. OK, so I'm old and I can't eat as much as I used to :T |
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| I ordered a Tokaji 5 puttonyos and Dad's sneaking a sip |
After our delicious dinner, we strolled over to the Hungarian State Opera House. We don't have time this trip to do the opera house tour, but it's definitely something to consider for next time. The Opera House is supposed to be one of the top 5 opera houses in Europe, after Paris Garnier and Vienna's, I believe.
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| Hungarian State Opera House |
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| Inside the Opera House |
I bought tickets of Cosi fan Tutte by Mozart some two months ago, when they first went on sale. At the time, all the good orchestra seats were bought out, so I had no choice but to buy into the first row of the balcony, which was up a lot higher than I'd anticipated. Angel has a fear of heights and she did not like the seats we were in at all. It's a vertical 80 feet drop to the ground if you lean over the balustrade.
Plus, we had to lean forward for the entire performance in order to see the stage. But heck, it was 1800 florints/person. What can you expect? Oh, and the usher refused to let us go in--she made us check our bags!!! At 200 florints. EACH! What??! I've never heard of that before...and plus, our neighbor had a ginormous bag. How come she got to go in and not us??? So we had to pay to check Mom's and Dad's bags in, which sucked.
It is a gorgeous theatre though. On the bottom left, you can see where the royals would sit:
The one thing about this opera I will say is, if you're gonna do a modern production, please, for the love of God, advertise that in your marketing. When I go to an opera, I expect to see the traditional regalia of flouncy satiny dresses. Not some half-baked fried hair look with corsets as the main costume. I don't get it. We've been to a couple operas now where they like to do modern stage design (no ballroom scenes! no chandeliers! gasp!), where it's all very stark and simplistic. It makes me think they're skimping on production design >.< If I'd known that this was a modern take, I wouldn't have gone.
The opera lasted until 10:30pm. We really wanted pictures of Budapest's sights at night, so we took a nighttime hike to get these pictures:
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| Buda Castle |
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| Chain Bridge |
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| Parliament Building |
By the time we arrived back at the hotel, it was already 11:30pm. It's 4:12am right now so I guess I'd better get some sleep!
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