Hungary is famous for its porcelain, lace and puzzle boxes. We walked down to a handicraft market in the morning to pick up some souvenirs. It started snowing as we left the hotel and it was quite an experience walking through it. It was just a light sprinkle but by the time we got to our destination we were all covered in a light dusting. It almost looked like someone had emptied a bottle of talcum powder on our heads.

Like most places in Europe there was artwork, statues and interesting structures as we walked along the Danube. There was even a statue of Shakespeare.

The markets reminded me of New Market in Calcutta with shops blending into each other and shop owners standing in the corridor. There were some very intricate works of lace and one shop keeper mentioned that a small table runner could take over a month to make. The boys really wanted a Rubiks Cube keyring as a momento from Budapest and looked in every store to compare prices. They finally found the cheapest one in a shop dedicated to puzzles.

Speaking of puzzles, a number of stores were selling wooden puzzle boxes. These are little boxes, hand crafted which need a certain sequence of moves to find the hidden key and open.

By now it was snowing really heavily so we went into a restaurant that served traditional Hungarian goulash. We have just been amazed how cheap food in Hungary is, especially compared to Scandinavia and even compared to Australia. We ordered 4 bowls of goulash which came with bread and it was enough for all of us. It was also full of veggies and beef and it cost less than $20.

The last activity we had organised was a coffee and cake tour of Budapest.I thought it would be a great way to end our holiday. We went to a number of traditional Hungarian cake shops and tried things like poppy seed cake, layered almost cake, marzipanand coffee. We also had some local botrytis which is made from grapes found in NE Hungary.

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