A Wonderful Italian Dinner in Budapest

Anniversaries need to be celebrated right? We dressed up (with what little we have in our backpacks), left the hostel, and walked to a lovely terrace in central Pest where Da Mario's Italian restaurant awaited us.  Along the way I met Ronald Reagan!

My skirt is from Urban Outiftters and my top is from Nasty Gal.  Both are firm favourites in my very limited collection of travel clothes!

 

 

 

A little bit starstruck? The statue is to commemorate and honour the work Reagan did to help rebuild eastern Europe after the war by the way, and there is a plaque outlining all of this right near the statue.

 

We shared a starter and chose the parmigiana tiepida, or the oven baked eggplant parmigiana for those amongst us that don't speak Italian.  Unfortunately the photos don't do the dish justice at all, but I am still only equipped with an iphone camera.  It was utterly delicious though!

 

For mains I chose the tagliolini with Sicilian pesto sauce.  Again, just plain yummy.  And the portion wasn't too large, so there was still room for dessert.  Winner.

I didn't manage to get a photo of Chewy's main because he started too quickly, but he had the risotto with porcini mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.  I am told it was delectable, but I wouldn't know that information first hand because I wasn't allowed to sample a single bite. 

I'll end the post with some photos of the inside of the restaurant because I really liked the interiors, especially the bar.  If you're in Budapest, pay Da Mario's a visit and you won't be disappointed.  The prices are very reasonable, the waitstaff are very attentive (if not overly so at times), and most importantly the food itself is definitely worth a visit.

 

At the end of dinner we decided to grab an ice cream each and a few ciders and headed back to the hostel, where we saw the night out sitting on the balcony of our third storey appartment.  Just lovely!

Sunshine in Budapest Part II

The sun was shining, the birds were singing, flowers were in full bloom…Budapest could not have been any prettier.  We read in a guidebook that you shouldn’t visit Budapest during summer because of the ‘stifling’ heat, but honestly, whoever wrote that lied and just didn’t want you to visit during the loveliest months of the year.  

We walked from Pest to Buda to see the castle and the ramparts, and it definitely didn’t disappoint.  On our walk, we passed yet another vegetarian restaurant by chance, this time a raw, vegan one.  We’d just had breakfast and weren’t at all hungary (I couldn’t resist, sorry), but again we were surprised at the number of vegetarian restaurants that seemed to be around.  Visiting the ramparts is free, so we kept things cheap that day by walking around the beautiful gardens and streets on top of the hill.  Getting into the castle does cost something, and for those of you with European passports do bring them because you pay half the price, and it is home to an extensive gallery.  We decided against going in because we really wanted to see an old castle in all its glory and weren’t too keen on a gallery that day, and we were trying to be stingy.  

So we walked and walked, and occasionally/frequently stopped because I had a horrible sinus infection and was a resident of struggle town.  The upside to this was that we could enjoy the incredible weather as it was simply stunning outside!  Without further ado, here are the photos.  Hope you enjoy them!

 

Chewy was feeling a bit peckish after all the sightseeing, and indulged in this artery clogger. 

Beautiful Budapest Part I

After an amazing week in Croatia, we left the country behind and caught a train from Zagreb to Budapest in Hungary.  We had decided that in Budapest we would spend 2 nights in a quiet hostel and get all of our sightseeing out of the way, and then spend 2 nights in one of the famed party hostels (we settled on Retox Party Hostel).  We arrived at our first hostel, and I immediately managed to break my top bunk.  Clearly I’d put on a few kilos, because one of the bed slats snapped in half when I climbed into my bunk.  Clever Milena.

That evening, we went for a walk by the Danube on the Pest side of Budapest, and what a beautiful sunset it was.  After going for a bit of a walk and working up some hunger, I used Happy Cow to find us a nice vegetarian restaurant.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you that eastern Europe isn’t vego friendly.  We walked past so many vegetarian restaurants in Budapest, purely by chance, and were absolutely spoilt for choice.  On our first evening we decided on Govinda’s, a lovely, little Indian restaurant serving up traditional Indian fare as well as some vegetarian takes on local dishes. Yum.  Even after one evening there, I had fallen in love with the beautiful city of Budapest and it was fast becoming evident that 4 nights there just wasn’t enough time to really see everything.

The photos from Govinda’s are annoyingly of pretty awful quality, but that is just because it’s dimly lit and iphone cameras are bad at dealing with that sort of lighting.  So excuse the bad quality photos, but the food was delicious!

The beautiful views we had from our train on the way.  Aren't the sunflowers just stunning?

Gorgeous sunset in Pest.

I didn't know this at the time, but these shoe sculptures are actually a monument to the Jews who lost their lives during World War II.  This memorial place is so simple, yet so effective.

The last one is one of my favourite pictures from today's post! The park had a sign that seemed to quite clearly state no dogs were allowed (my Hungarian is not that great), and it looked like there was a gathering of dog owners and trainers there when we strolled past.  There were at least 30 or 40 dogs all running around this park having an absolute ball.  It was so cute that I made Chewy sit down and watch them with me for a good 15 minutes!

 

These are the unassuming stairs down to Govinda's.

 

A happy chappy at the prospect of a big feed!

 

Pay Govinda's a visit when you're next in Budapest, and I promise you you won't be disappointed!