Bites of Budapest
This was a walk around the city trying some of their delicacies.
A detail of the Central Market.
A detail of the roof.
Looking down one of the central aisles.
Looking towards the central area.
A Calvinist church, easily identifiable by the star at the top inside of a cross which would indicate a Catholic church.
We moved on to a local modern market, the building itself is nothing special but the inside has all the food and ingredients the locals would buy on a daily basis. Sausages.
Pork butcher. Pork figures significantly as under Ottoman occupation for 150 years, they ate the cows, goats and sheep so only pork was in plentiful supply for the locals.
A cheese shop which also sold...
pickles and we sampled gherkins, melon and sauerkraut.
Another cheese shop.
Fruits and berries, the strawberry season had just finished (they still grew strawberries under glass but our guide said that the taste was different).
A stall selling honey.
Langos, a flatbread with cottage cheese and grated hard cheese.
We took another bus to the New Jewish area which is full of artists, cafes and restaurants and stopped at a delicatessen which doubled as a cafe. where we tried some paprika, washed down with palinka, a spirit traditionally made by farmers who fermented surplus fruit and distilled it. There is also a plink museum for those who want to know more.
Followed by a soft cheese blended with paprika served on bread.
Two types of sausage with on the left, soft crackling...
,,,and for a dessert, we tried some honey...
...and paprika chocolate which tasted really nice. Other flavours are available...
...including sushi chocolate which is green like wasabi and with an 8cms square costing EUR7.50, it is expensive and sounds an unusual combination but it works well just like other unexpected combinations such as chocolate and chilli or strawberries and black pepper.
Just a short walk further and we had rates which is an Hungarian version of apfelstrudle which comes in various flavours and not just apple including raspberry, chocolate and wild cherry plus cheese and paprika.
A relief and the street named after Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish diplomat who issued documents to Jews so that they could flee the country. He was warned to leave the country but stayed to save more Jews but when the Russians occupied the city, he was denounced as a American spies and arrested by the Russians and allegedly died of a heart attack in the Lubijyamka NKVD prison in Moscow at the age of 33.
And for some unknown reason, on a street corner, there is a statue of Peter Falk, aka Columbo and his dog.
On the way back to the ship we walked past the entrance to the Parliament building...
...a detail of the entrance...
...and this is what the crowd were looking at, a military band and we listened to a few tunes before moving on.
And as if I hadn't eaten enough...dinner was a beef consommé...
...with corn fed chicken...
...and a dessert with an unpronounceable Hungarian name with more syllables than I have fingers containing...guess what?...paprika.
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