First day in Budapest - Saturday

We arrived at the airport at 10:45. We met Bill and Roceil and our travel guide, Vonda. She's a very pleasant Hungarian woman who speaks good English with a very charming accent. Which to me sounds Italian.

We went to the Marriott Hotel (Google Earth link) in Budapest and by this time was Saturday around 1 pm.

We freshened up and went to the Great Market Hall in Budapest. We ate at one of the markets there. It's like a huge mall, except the shops are very small. In fact, its more like booths. There were all sorts of trinkets, shirts, Hungarian sourvenirs, etc. One scene that amused me was of George Bush and Osama Bin Laden side by side.


For lunch I ate some Beef Goulash on rice. Cathi went with Katie and Becky while I walked around with Bill Sr and Steve. Katie was hungry, but not enough to eat strange stuff, so her party went to Burger King for lunch. I met up with Cathi and Becky and we walked along the street with shops back to the Hotel. I noticed that both Cathi and Becky both would touch everything that caught their eye and say "So Cute!". A guy would say "cool" and move on. But they would caress the item gently for a second and then move on. Very entertaining watching women shop.

Went back to the hotel and looked for a way to get to the BVSC. The club play according to my email with Club manager, Iván Herendi started at 3:00pm. We asked the front desk at the Marriott about how to get to Szőnyi and he said it was several miles. Cathi asked about the Subway which she noticed on the way back from the Market. He gave us a map and said that Szőnyi was the last stop on the subway. We took it. We bought our tickets from the Marriott gift shop and she told us how to validate the ticket at the stop. Here is video of the subway ride with hungarian announcer in the background. Kind of scary being in a strange land using transportation for locals. Felt safe, but just a little unnerving not understanding the signs, or language.

When Cathi and I arrived there, we followed the map to the BVSC which was only about a half mile from the subway stop. We went to the front entrance of the BVSC which also has a pool and many other facilities. The front desk people didn't speak english and I showed her my email from Ivan and she pointed me to the another building at the other end of the block where I could find the table tennis building. We wound our way through the buildings and noticed signs with a table tennis paddle on it. We found the Table Tennis building and went inside. There were displays of Hungarian Table Tennis players and organizers. Apparently there is a very long history of table tennis in Hungary. Would have loved to learn more about it if it was in English or someone could speak with me.

I played with Australian guy "Chubba". He won two matches and I won one. He was from Sydney and was in an accident and was disabled. He still played great. I tried to buy a shirt with a BVSC logo on it, but they didn't have any, even though I saw a ton of players with them. I guess they either have to earn them, or they ran out.

Chubba and I talked about the Hungarian culture, and table tennis in Hungary for a bit, and then Cathi walked into another portion of the building where a tournament was going on! She told me I should check it out as they were playing at a level she had never seen before. My jaw dropped as I saw these kids play. Many of them were probably in the 2400 rating range. I took lots of video. Great players! You can check out the videos and pictures of BVSC here . The building they were playing in was really old. It reminded me of being in a Medal of Honor Game where the buildings are made of concrete and really plain. Very intriguing though.

Cathi and I made our way back to the subway. There was a bakery on the corner with a display of cookies that made our mouths water. I made a goal when we left to only half half a desert (split it with Cathi) whenever the opportunity arose.

We took the subway back and we ate at Peppers! The restaurant in the Marriott. For Dinner the Menu was:

1. Terrine of roe deer with mustard fruits and port wine marinated apricots


2. Star anis spiced carrot cream soup
3. Lemon-almond marzipan filled chicken breast on sage dressing and vegetable cous cous
4. Banana-passion fruit charlotte with pepper croquette

I didn't eat desert. I was feeling like I was going to need to be good on this trip. I ate every thing else. I was disappointed in Cathi. She didn't eat much of her main course and ate my desert. I noticed that not many others ate their dinners either. Why pay to go to a fancy restaurant only to be too chicken to eat it? Bill must be shaking his head.


After dinner Cathi and I prepared to go on a run. We ran along the Danube river and passed the Parliament building. Noticed armed guards around it. I took some video of it here. As I was taking video a bicyclist came up from behind me and almost hit me as I was turning around with the camera. Cathi yelled out from behind me "Gordon, Gordon!" Here is the video of that. The path along the Danube was awesome. It wasn't busy and it was nice to see Budapest all lit up. We ran past the Chain Bridge, past the Margaret Bridge and almost to the Arpad Bridge. We ran to this point at Robert Karoly Road, then ran back. The path along the Danube was well lit, the road we ended on was not well lit and we already had run over 3 miles.

Bill told us about Margaret Island but didn't know how to get there. We'll try going there tomorrow. We found out that to get there you have to actually take the Margaret Bridge. Cathi and I checked out the pool. It was only about 12 yards long. Will have to do a hundred laps to get in a decent workout. The weight room though was pretty good.

Today was a fun day!