Day 47 Thursday 7 July 2016

Breakfast at 7.30am where we met up with some of our fellow travellers & have some breakfast together before saying our goodbyes. We catch up with some mail, pay some bills & sort some photos before catching our car at 10.30am for Heathrow airport. The traffic was heavy & very slow for the first few miles but we had a very nice chat with our driver, a Jamaican who has lived in London for around 50 years & has driven some interesting & notable people, including Richard Branson who owns the Virgin brand of companies & Clive Lloyd the West Indian cricketer. Our trip to Heathrow was around an hour, then the usual queues for check-in, passports, security then a bit of shopping before a little time in the British Airways lounge & some lunch. The plane was on time departing & after 2 ½ hours flying we landed in Budapest. One of our bags was close to the last dropped onto the luggage carousel so a delay getting out. We were met by Tereza’s cousin Bela at the exit & it was great to see him again. There was a fair wait at the rental car counter before we were handed the keys to a near new Ford Fiesta. We drove Bela back into Budapest & he guided us to his house very close to the centre of the city. My back was very sweaty by the time we got to Bela’s it was peak hour traffic in a big city, my first time driving a manual left-hand drive car anywhere & it was a bit nerve wracking at times.

We were greeted by Gyorgyi, she had been busy preparing a nice Hungarian meal for dinner, but first a homemade Palinka (Hungarian fruit whisky) or two & some very tasty savoury bread/cake she made. We chatted for ages & I got the occasional English translation. It is difficult that I can’t speak or understand much Hungarian, just the basics. Dinner was a delicious meat goulash washed down with some nice home-made red wine. It was very late before we got to bed, very tired.