Viking continues to demonstrate why their service is worth the cost. Twenty-eight of us are staying at the Ananatara New York Palace Hotel in the City Center (Pest side). It is five-star and all that comes with that. They transferred our luggage with a guide and he is on their desk here for several hours a day. Since we couldn’t check into the rooms until 3:00, he took us on a walk to orient us and the rain held off until evening. Turns out Uber works well here and we took that to the Central Market because it closes at 3:00 on Saturday and isn’t open on Sunday. Like all such places, it was in a great old building like a huge train station and had all sorts of stalls. Foods, crafts, and so forth. There was a cafeteria and we decided to go for it. We had a “layered potato” which was thin sliced potatoes, thin sliced sausage and some kind of sauce baked together. We had goulash and there was pork version that was actually a soup. That combined with a local draft beer made for what we think was authentic fare.

We didn’t buy anything because our guy had suggested another place to get the few things I am looking for. We walked back in order to see more of the City and ran across some interesting parts. The guide had a sheet of restaurant recommendations and the one of KonovyBar sounded intriguing. It is a small place – seats only 32, but since we wanted to go at 7:00, they could fit us in. The room has one wall completely devoted to books; the front wall is half devoted and the half wall dividing the two sides is also a book shelf. Each night they feature a menu from a book – last night was from the French classic, The Little Prince. Hugh almost went with that and did the sea trout as a starter and the duck breast instead. I had the local ham and some sort of whipped cheese with marinated grape sauce and steak with potatoes. Their menu is limited although there was something in all the basic foods. Unfortunately, the steak was medium rare (common for Europe) and the potato presentation was lovely, but a bit underdone. The sauce for the meat helped make up for it and quite frankly I had enough food. We did pass on dessert as we have had so much of that on the ship.

More rain and cold today so we’ll Uber later to a museum.