Down the Danube: Hungary

For two weeks in September-October this year, the Far Outliers took a Viking cruise down the Danube River from Budapest to Bucharest. Here are some impressions from each of the countries we visited. A photo album from the trip (Danube 2024) is on Flickr.

We flew from NY JFK to Paris CDG, then to Budapest, where Viking lodged us in the luxurious Corinthia Hotel on Erzsebet korut in Pest. We had warned longtime favorite blogger Dumneazu that we were coming. He lives in the old Jewish quarter just a few blocks away so we had a nice long visit with him at a little coffee and pastry shop. He recommended two restaurants on Pozsonyi ut near the Danube for the best authentic Hungarian food. (When we were last in Budapest 40 years ago on a holiday trip from grim Romania, we had eaten at the more famous Gundel and Cafe New York.) So, on our second evening in Pest, we walked to Kiskakukk (Little Cuckoo) and ate their specialty platter for two: crispy goose leg, fried duck leg, foie gras on roast, duck breast fillet, onion mashed potatoes, homemade potato doughnuts, fried apple, steamed cabbage, washed down with a nice Hungarian pinot noir.

We ate and drank very well on this cruise, but we also walked a lot at each stop, often 10,000 steps a day. Our group excursion in Budapest was a walking tour of Buda Castle Hill, which started with a ride to the starting point on the excellent city trams (which operate 24/7/365). Our tour guide was originally from Hong Kong and, like all the Viking excursion guides, was well-versed in local history and culture.

The hotel lounge one night featured a string quartet with cimbalom, which drew us in. When I asked the very energetic waitress there for a dry Tokaji wine, she brought me a nice dry one, and later offered a much richer variety as a nightcap. She was of Romanian Szekler origin, whose family immigrated to Hungary during her school years, so I was able to practice a bit of Romanian with her.

After an overnight cruise, we stopped at a tiny pier at Kalocsa, where we visited the spectacular Assumption Cathedral for an impressive pipe organ concert. The former monastery there had been turned into a Paprika Museum. Then we took busses to a horse farm for an amusing display of Hungarian horsemanship before returning to the ship.

The Viking ships have both European-style and American-style outlets, so we were able to keep our phones, laptops, and camera charged, but the Corinthia Hotel had only round, European-style outlets, so we had to use our small Europlug roundpin adapters. Our larger squarish multitype adapters would not fit in the round recesses of the outlets.