Today is my last day in Budapest before returning to UK and I started with the Great Market Hall or Central Market Hall (Nagy Vásárcsarnok).This is the largest indoor market in Budapest opened towards the end of the 19th-century. There are a great numbers of stalls inside this market hall and you can practically get anything and everything you need here. Stepping into the market hall (ground floor), you'll find stalls selling fresh vegetables, fruits, poultry, salami, bakeries and popular souvenirs such as paprika, tokaji, and caviar. The first floor are typical tourist articles, such as pictures, dolls, glasses, tablecloths, chess boards and clothes made in Hungarian style. You can also find some food stalls and cafe here offering typical Hungarian food. The lower-ground floor has stalls selling marinated vegetables, fish market and also a Match supermarket.
There's such contrast on the colors of the fruits and vegetables stacked neatly by the stall owners. The variety of sausages and salami on display just awed me. Not forgetting also all the different cakes, biscuits, pastries and the humongous bread on offer from the few bakeries stalls. It's just an eye-opener and a must visit. I went to the food stalls upstairs and ordered what I thought is a stuffed cabbage. Well it is some kind of stuffed cabbage alright but not exactly. Turned out I ordered a Bavarian Sour Cabbage. No wonder I only paid 480Ft for that as opposed to the 800Ft shown on the Menu. Hahaha... another blunder of mine. The stuffed cabbage is cabbage stuffed with meat and rice; and the sour cabbage I had is stuffed with rice and a wee bit of meat.It's served with sour cream and some marinated sour sliced cabbage at the side. I wanted to order a stuffed paprika but too bad they don't have it then.
After that I walked along Vaci utca towards the Voromarty Square. This time, I went into Gerbaud and sat down to have a slice of the famous Dobos cake and latte. It is a five-layer lemon, saffron or vanilla sponge cake, layered with chocolate butter cream and topped with thin caramel slices. The cake is also often called 'Dobos-torta' or 'Dobostorta'. Its very nice and not too sweet. 甜而不腻. The interior of the Gerbaud is very grand and elegant. The waitresses are busy bustling about taking and serving orders. They are dressed in beige colored blouse and their dress is of floral pattern in dark brown, gold and maroon color and a maroon color short apron. Outside the cafe there were 2 elderly guys performing for the Gerbaud customers. One guy with violin and another with a flute. They are here every single day and the customers would tip them for the lovely wonderful music they played compliments the entire atmosphere bringing everybody back in time. It almost felt like its the era where writers, poets sits in the Gerbaud writting a play, a poem or story while sipping coffee.
After my coffee break, I sat at the Vorosmarty square taking in the last few hours I had here in Budapest. Then I went strolling along the Danube river and sat there again for quite sometime... just to pass time :p My last meal in Budapest is at Kisharang restaurant. Another small eatery introduced by the LP which is pretty nice. I had a Goulash chicken on noodles and a glass of apple juice. The noodle is not the normal long yellow noodle. I think it's one type of pasta. There are 2 huge chicken drumstick on the noodles and they are simply delicious. The Goulash sauces are so good I finished the whole dish although I'm not that hungry. The whole meal just cost me 1070Ft... much cheaper than the piece of cake and latte in Gerbaud which costs me around 1600Ft.
After that, I went back to the hostel to get my luggage and head off to the airport. It's just a small airport so I practically just sat and waited at the lounge after checking in ... again I got away without having to check my backpack in =)
After 2hours and 10 mins later, I landed in Bristol airport around 11.30pm. The wait to cross the passport control was pretty long as we had an almost full plane of passengers and only 2 counters opened. The pick up from the car-park is already waiting when I got there. However, they haven't moved my car to the small car park so I had to follow the guy to the big, dark and cold carpark to search for my Micra. Driving back to Swindon is pretty ok with very little traffic on the motorways. It is already past midnight. Arrived home around 1.30am and that's the end of my Budapest trip.
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