Paris - City of Stairs

So many experiences to remember in Paris. Loved it, loved it, loved it. But I have to say there are a lot of stairs in Paris.

Hotel St Andres des Arts - our beautiful hotel. Our room is located troiseme etage (3rd floor). Two flights was fine it was the third one that killed us every time. No lift. Which given the experience in Budapest may be a good thing. The lift there dropped 6 inches every time you stepped into it and it was built during the cold war sometime when Hungary was very eastern bloc.
Catacombs - buried deep below the city. A single spiral staircase down and the same back up albeit a few blocks away.
Le Louvre - an exceptionally large building with three wings of four floors each. These have escalators - great. However not one of these floors is a single level. They all go up and down with many staircases just to break things up - I think?
Tour Eiffel - congestion in the lifts? No wonder who would use the stairs? Even though the queue is much shorter.

Every French Cafe - apparently a design feature is to locate the restrooms below the ground floor. Always to be found down a narrow spiral staircase in the floor somewhere.
Metropolitan - the infamous Paris Metro. Great way of getting around but the number of stairs will vary greatly depending on the age of the line you wish to take.

Anyway, we all got some exercise! I can feel it doing me good.

Ah Vienna!

Wien

Our RailJet train trip from Budapest took about 4 hours and we arrived in Vienna (Wien) around 5 pm at Westbahnhof station; and after walking the full length of the very long platform with our backpacks, grabbed a taxi to our hotel (The Carlton Opera on Schikanedergasse), south of the main city centre. Our apartments were located at the rear of the hotel through many a winding passage and stairway, on the 2nd floor. The rooms were spacious (very spacious indeed) with lots of natural light and consisted of two bedrooms, kitchen, dining and a bathroom as well as an entry foyeur. However, not nearly as well-equipped or comfortable as our Budapest apartment (well, perhaps we had been a little spoiled by that); and with very poor WI-FI services. But ... the hotel was well-located to the metro and (we soon found) next to the famous Wiener Nascht markt which sold all manner of exotic produce and had small, smoked filled pubs serving warm goulash and schnitzal and cold beer.


The weather had decided to rain for the 2 of the 3 days we were in Wien, but that didn't dampen our enthusiasm to get out an sight-see. A highlight for me was finding the Gymnasium school where the young Erwin Schrodinger was taught. 


In keeping with our usual modus operandi, we set ourselves a couple of tasks. For Geoff, it was to find a zoom lens for the camera that would do justice to the photo opportunities for wildlife in Africa. For Deb it was to find a pair of 8x50 binoculars that would do the same - both tasks successfully completed (two ticks!). We found the binoculars at an interesting little optical store, just around the corner from our hotel, which also sold microscopes and astronomical telescopes and mounts (the good ones, of course).


Of course, we had already completed our first task as soon as we arrived, which was to buy tickets on Friday's RailJet to Munich.

Amongst the Magyars

View of Budapest

We spent 5 days in Budapest and although much colder than Greece, we enjoyed our time there.

After settling into our chic apartment, we set off to explore our surrounds and find the transport and shops. Dorka (from Hip Homes) had told us about the market place a couple of blocks away and we found it with no trouble at all. I have to say the vegetables and produce for sale was fresh and wholesome, with many tempting items - savoury and sweet (see sample). It took some time to get used to spending Hungarian Forints, but we soon returned with groceries and supplies to stock our pantry and fridge.

The second challenge was to buy our train tickets to Vienna. But before this we had to learn how to use the trams. These ran quite close to our place on Ulazlo Utca, but we weren't sure about how to actually buy a ticket. Although there were ticket machines at the tram stops, I am fairly certain they hadn't issued a ticket since 1982. So we brazenly jumped the tram and changed trams in a clever strategy to avoid the ticket inspectors. Once we made it across the Danube to the "Pest" side of town, we were able to buy a combined rail/tram/bus ticket that gave us 3 days unlimited travel. Which was lucky because, as we found later, ticket inspectors do ride the trams undercover in the tourist areas.

The metro trains were efficient, fast, comfortable and easy to use. However, the yellow and green carriages showed every bit their Eastern bloc vintage. After making it to Keleti central train station, we found the international ticket office, and were served by a friendly lady who sold us return tickets because they are actually cheaper than one way (we took this to mean they wanted to encourage us to return); and also reserved seats to ensure we had a place to sit.

Budapest is a grand city, although small in population (less than 2m), the architecture, buildings and parks have a regal bearing and aesthetic appeal, which made it a wonderful place to visit. Check out the pictures here.

Another challenge we set ourselves was to find replacement mandolin strings. Yes, these had been loosened and re-tuned once too often and the high E-string couldn't take the pressure anymore and snapped! After some internet research, we found a place that advertised mandolin strings (SEGOVIA Gitárszaküzlet on Eötvös) and found some strings - although of a lighter gauge  - that solved the problem.


After 5 days in Budapest, I have to say we were really settling in, but had to remind ourselves that other locations awaited and we already had the tickets!