Budapest, day 4

The boys were tired walking and visiting Budapest. Each night, they slept later than usual at around 9 to 9.30pm. Yet every morning, they woke up at 7am. They had dark circles under their eyes but their bio clocks were precise. Seb would make them watch cartoons on his laptop while I tried to sleep a little more.

By 8.30am, we would be at the breakfast room. On this last day, we checked out at 10am and requested for a taxi to the airport for 2pm. We left our bags at the locker room and walked to the Parliament Building.

We decided to spend our last few hours in Budapest visiting the Parliament. We reserved our tickets for the one hour guided tour at 11am. We chose the tour in english and the boys were not too happy about it. They would prefer the french tour. The tour guide showed us a wing of the building and shared the history of this building. From 3m height above, real gold leaves were used to decorate the ceilings and the walls. A total of 40kg of pure gold were used.

The object below is a cigars holder. In the old days, during parliament sessions, the members of the parliament would smoke their cigars along the corridor. As no smoking was allowed in the hall, they would leave their cigars on these holders. If a speaker was interesting, the members would sit in for a long time. When they exited, their cigars would have burnt away. The Hungarian saying 'It was worth a havana' came from this illustration.   I found this site that explained the guided tour in details.

After the tour, we had lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant. Like the first restaurant we visited on our first day, coloring pencils and papers were offered to the boys so they were kept occupied while we waited for our food. The grilled vegetables were so good, we ordered a second portion. The pizzas were baked in a wood fired oven. 

Da Mario is a cosy restaurant and has a good ranking on TripAdvisor. It is really easy to find good food in Budapest.

We walked back to the hotel just in time with the taxi waiting for us. We bade farewell to the friendly hotel staff and had a smooth ride back to the airport. 

I spent the last of our Forint at the food court at the airport. The trip back home was smooth except that Air France did not have enough snacks. As we were sitting in the middle of the planes, by the time the front and back passengers were served, there was no more snack. It was the first time I experienced this but it was no big deal as the flight was a short one. I just find it amusing that the provision of snacks were not well calculated.

Once we reached France, we drove to pick up Handsome at the petsitter before heading home. It was the first time Handsome stayed with a petsitter and it went well. We reached home at 9pm.

Budapest is a family friendly city. We felt safe walking along the streets and the people we met were all friendly and positive. I highly recommend this city for a short getaway.