Central Europe trip, Post 8: Budapest

After Zagreb, we spent three nights in Budapest, Hungary. We arrived on New Year's Eve (a Tuesday), and left on Friday, January 3rd.

Our B&B was a small, basic, and somewhat grungy one a fair distance from the city centre, on the Buda side, as it was just too expensive to stay in the heart of Budapest over New Year's. However, it afforded us a good view of the many NYE fireworks displays on the hills around the city; they went on for hours!

Unfortunately, this part of the trip was my turn to be feeling under the weather, so we didn't do most of the sightseeing I'd had in mind. But here's what we did get up to...

On two of the three nights, we walked to a restaurant at another B&B about 20 minutes from ours. Both times we had interesting and tasty Hungarian meals, and Finley spent a lot of time charming the manager!

On Thursday afternoon we rode the Children's Railway (Gyermekvasút) up in the Buda Hills. This is not a railway FOR children... but a railway RUN BY children! (With the exception of the train driver and - I think - some supervisors.) Children's railways were a popular "extracurricular educational institution" in the Soviet era, and there are still a number of them operating in eastern Europe today.

The railway is 11.2 km long, but we only rode part of it as otherwise we would miss the last train back. The view from the train wasn't particularly exciting, but it was an interesting experience, and Finley enjoyed holding hands with one of the teenage conductors (photo below)! One of the best parts was watching the young staff line up and salute the train as we departed from each station. We didn't manage to get a good photo of them all doing it, but one boy held the salute for long enough that we caught it in one of the shots below.

Budapest was originally two cities, Buda and Pest, with the Danube River dividing them. After our train ride, we parked near the Danube on the Pest side and walked along on foot beside the river. It was dark by this time and we had the vague idea of taking a boat tour, but the area was fairly deserted and we didn't find anything suitable. As we drove back to our B&B, first on the Pest side and then on the Buda side of the river, we enjoyed some breathtaking views of Budapest's most famous buildings.

City sights as seen from the Pest side...

Gellert Hill

Buda Castle

Buda Castle

Matthias Church and Fisherman's Bastion

Matthias Church and Fisherman's Bastion

Hungarian Parliament Building

And from the Buda side...

Hungarian Parliament Building

Hungarian Parliament Building

And that was all we really saw of Budapest... I hardly feel like I've been there at all! Oh well, we'll just have to go again... ;)

Kwaj trip, Post 2: New Year's Eve

[If you're observant, you may notice that I haven't posted about December 30th (our second day on Kwaj and also our 5th wedding anniversary!). However, that's because the main thing we did was dive, and I'm planning to dedicate a few upcoming posts solely to diving!]

The last day of 2011 - our third day on Kwaj - was the first time we experienced a few tropical rainstorms on Kwaj. They lasted for about 10 minutes and reminded us of Australia. In the afternoon, the sky was overcast instead of the usual bright blue with fluffy clouds. Although the temperature was still balmy, the rain and clouds meant that this was considered a crummy day on Kwaj! The temperature there is usually around 31 degrees Celsius (87 F), getting down to about 26 degrees Celsius (79 F) overnight. Just perfect!

The working week on Kwaj is Tuesday to Saturday, in order to be more in line with mainland USA (since Kwaj is 20 hours ahead of the US west coast). However, Peter only worked a half day, and then came home to an omelette lunch (made by Ben). Later, Marissa and I rode to Surfway (the grocery store) to get a few ingredients for the meal we would be cooking that night.

Around 3pm, we went to the Small Boat Marina and completed the paperwork necessary to rent two double kayaks. The kayaks were stored at Camp Hamilton Beach (beside the runway on the lagoon side of the island), so we grabbed life jackets and paddles and then rode our bikes up to CHB and launched the kayaks there.

The lagoon side of the island is reasonably sheltered and calm, so it was a nice paddle up to the beach we chose at the west end of the island. The wind was at our backs though, so we knew the return trip would take a bit more effort!

At the beach, we went swimming in the ocean and sat under the trees to wait out another rainstorm. We saw lots of hermit crabs and snails with interesting shells crawling on the rocks and sand. There were green shells, lilac shells, spiky shells, round shells, and long pointy shells. One large hermit crab couldn't fit all the way into the shell he had chosen, but he would bundle all his legs together outside of the shell to make himself as small and smooth as possible, then stick his eyes under the rim of the shell, poking them out now and then to see if we had stopped hassling him yet!

Our kayaks at the nameless beach we had all to ourselves

Ben and Herm

Eyes out...

...and eyes in!

After spending an hour or so there, we paddled back to Camp Hamilton Beach – against the wind, so it was a good upper body workout. However, you know the temperature's pretty perfect when you can be kayaking in the ocean, getting soaked with waves and rain, wearing short sleeves... and not even have goosebumps!!

Peter and Marissa kayaking in the rain

Peter, Marissa and Ben at Camp Hamilton Beach

Back at Small Boat Marina, we saw a fishing boat return, so we stayed to watch the catch being cleaned and the innards being thrown to the waiting sharks. We could see a number of sharks actually following the boat into the marina, and soon there were about 20 nurse sharks clamouring for treats below where we were standing!

Ben took a video showing the frenzy when the fisherman, Rick (a high school social sciences teacher on Kwaj), threw the remains of a filleted fish to them. Some blacktip sharks also came cruising in during the kerfuffle, but quickly swam away again – apparently they like to keep their distance.

The day's catch

Rick

Nurse sharks waiting for yummy fish guts

Layers of sharks - the darker ones are deeper

It was interesting to see some shark suckers hanging out with the sharks in the shallows. These are slim, 30cm-long fish with suction caps on top of their heads. They use these to attach to the underneath of sharks (or occasionally divers) and hitch a ride!

After spending a while in the Tank House talking to Rob, a colleague of Peter's we would be diving with the next day, we rode home and made honey curry chicken on rice with stirfry veggies for dinner. Ben also made two berry pies for the next day. For dessert, we ate decadent sticky pecan buns that Marissa had made that morning. Yum!

As it was New Year's Eve, at 9pm Marissa, Ben and I went bowling with some other locals (Peter stayed home to catch up on some sleep). The bowling alley had eight lanes, thumping music, manual scoring, plenty of balls of each size, and nicer shoes than I've ever seen in a bowling alley. It was $10pp for unlimited games. I was constantly impressed with the facilities on Kwaj, considering the population is only 1500!

The bowling alley was filled with NYE revellers wearing glittery hats and glow sticks. Our group had two lanes and we were with P&M's friends Kristi and Bryon (from the Bomb Squad) and Betina and Charlie (a helicopter pilot). We bowled for 3 hours and welcomed in the new year with the various noise makers provided. It was a fun night!

Ben, me, Marissa, Kristi, Bryon, Betina, Charlie

Happy New Year!

Chinese New Year Parade

On the weekend, we took the Skytrain into Chinatown to watch the Chinese New Year Parade (Year of the Rabbit) with Conrad and Chantelle.

Vancouver's Chinatown is the largest in Canada, dating back to the late 1800s. These days about one in three Vancouver residents are of Asian descent, with the largest proportion of those being Chinese: about 17% of the total metropolitan population is of Chinese ethnicity. This means that Greater Vancouver has the highest percentage of residents of Chinese descent in North America... and thus a thriving Chinese culture, which the parade was certainly testament to!

It rained during most of the parade, which may be obvious from all the umbrellas in our photos! But it was very fun, interesting, colourful, and noisy (lots of drums, cymbals, marching bands, and firecrackers!). Our favourite parts of the parade were the marching band dressed as rabbits, and the little kids wearing traditional costumes. It was an entertaining hour or so!

Conrad and Chantelle...


And us...


Afterwards, we had lunch at the nearby Acme Cafe, and then headed home on the Skytrain. It was a fun outing!