To Budapest, June 1999

Yesterday we came to Budapest. We arrived in the afternoon and all the
hotels recommended by our guidebooks were full. We took a room in the only hotel the travel agency we tried said was left. It was more than we were
expecting (I think we paid a 20-30 dollar dumb-people-who-arrive-late-in-the-day-without-reservations surcharge,) but the hotel itself was in a neighborhood that seemed convenient enough and pretty much OK. The room was small and clean. *But* from around midnight til around 4am it was really noisy. People were walking around in the halls talking and bumping into things, and there was some really long-lasting sex in some rooms above us (I mean
like 4 hours). I thought the hotel was probably renting rooms by the hour to prostitutes, but I. believes we just happened to have some really enthusiastic neighbors with a lot of endurance.

This morning we moved to another place. Our new room is in a family's
apartment in an amazing building built in 1893. It has a pretty courtyard in the center, and lots of rather dilapidated beautiful sculptures and trim and statuary. And lacy wrought-iron railings. We're on the 3rd floor and have french windows that open from our room onto a little balcony out onto a famous square. And it costs less than $12 a night. We share the bathroom with the family and they have a yipping little dog
that hid under the table as soon as we got anywhere near it, but it looks very enjoyable. The dad of the family showed us around when we got there, and he
seemed friendly and delighted that we spoke a teeny amount of Magyar. And the mom of the family talked to us as we were leaving and she was also really friendly
and smiley and glad that we spoke a little Hungarian.