Bath Christmas Fair

Saturday 29th November- Ian and I jumped on the train and made our way to Bath. We arrived just before 11 as the stalls were starting to open. We took advantage of the early start and the fact that there were few crowds to make our way quickly through most of the stalls. There were lots of crafts, clothes, candles, and food (surprisingly a lot of cheese stalls). we picked up a few presents then made our way to a few of my favourite shops in Bath, including one stationary store where I picked up an advent calender portraying the Bath Abbey and Christmas fair stalls. After all our shopping we joined the queue at Sally Lunn's and were soon enjoying some warming soup followed by cream tea. We walked around a bit more after our late lunch before catching the 5:30 train back to Bristol. Once home we dropped off our purchases and went to an Advent service at St. Peter's before finally having dinner and unwinding at home

Home again

Since returning from Budapest nearly all the leaves have fallen off the trees. We've had a number of very cold days and the it gets quite dark early in the afternoon. However, we have a fantastic view from our window of st. peter's church.

Homeward bound

After the zoo, we grabbed a panne dolce for a snack, not as good as the first because it was cold but still good. We walked through the park to the Szechenyi baths and admired the architecture then went to the grocery store for some last minute souvenirs before heading back to the hotel. We only had to wait a few minutes at the hotel before our taxi arrived to take us to the airport. A few hours later we were on the plane heading back to Merry old England.

Budapest Zoo

From there we made our way to the city zoo. We saw a number of fantastic animals with lots of interesting sculptures and ornate houses. The most impressive was the domes elephant house with it teal tiles and jade green elephant head at the opening. The interior was palatial with beautiful mosaics and chandeliers. The zoo also had a model of a Hungarian farm, with an interesting hairy pig, dog, sheep, goats and geese. Small ponies were used to cart around the food and waste from the farm. We saw bears, tigers, lions, leopards, meerkat, camels, rhinos, giraffe, kangaroos, wallabies, warthogs, mara (a rodent that looks like a cross between a deer and a rabbit, which I had never seen before), wolves, vultures, owls, cranes and many others. my favourites were the armadillos who seemed to think that we were there to feed them and came running over sniffling at us. Ian was quite intrigued with watching the porcupines eat. It was a great visit.

Final day-City Park

Monday 17 November - we started off our last day in Budapest with some pastry from Gerbeaud. After clearing out from our room we dropped our stuff at the reception desk and made our way to city park. We walked to Vajdahunyad castle which now house the agricultural museum. We also saw the statue of anonymous commemorating the first chronicler of Hungarian history. I touched the tip of his golden pen for good luck on my dissertation.

Pest at night

Once we had wandered around the inner city to our satisfaction we hoped on the metro and headed back over to Buda's castle district to hit some of the shops we had visited the day before. After making our purchases we strolled around the castle district and enjoyed the amazing views of Pest lit up at night from the Fisherman's Bastion and the Sandor Palace before heading back across the river for dinner at another restaurant on Andrassy Utca, This time an opulent cafe with chandeliers and large mirrors. Where we had an excellent meal and wrote some postcards before strolling the rest of the way up Adrassy Utca to the hotel.

Pest-inner city

Following our relaxing morning at the Baths we walked back over to Pest to have lunch and explore the inner city. We had lunch on Vaci street, known for its shopping. We enjoyed the tourist menu which was composed of classic hungarian food: goulash to start followed by paprika chicken with gnochi and a jam filed pancake for dessert. Once fortfied by some good food we stopped in a few souvenir shops then did a tour of the inner city sites. There were lots of beautiful smaller palaces and churches as well as some impressive art nouveau banks and office buildings.