Happy Birthday To Me

It was my birthday on Monday, so as a present from the other half we went down to the West End and The Gielgud Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue to see a modern re-telling of that Scottish play of Shakespeare's with Patrick Stewart in the lead as Macbeth himself.

For some reason on other, I'd realised that I've never seen one of Shakespeare's plays performed live, and well, it's always interesting to try something at least once, I told the other half when it was obviously not her cup of tea.

As it was, we both really enjoyed it. For something that ran for about three hours (including the interval) there really only was one act when things slowed down and I got a bit bored. The other half, in fact, actually nodded off but then she managed the same feat in the middle of a loud song and dance routine at a musical we saw in New York, so I wasn't too surprised.

So asides from that one dip, the rest of the play was suitably intense. The setting was in more modern times in a somewhat Stalinesque Russia which suited the treachery and greed for power that unfolds within the story perfectly.

Newsreel shots of parading soldiers played across the walls and an atmospherically smokily back-lit clanking lift centre-stage brought characters in and out of the story with some style.

The three witches in particular, re-imagined here as field hospital nurses or serving girls flitting around in the background until the lighting dims, heart monitor traces illuminate the walls and they take centre stage with their echoing words foretelling the future are just wonderfully evil.

So a pretty original (for me) and excellent time was had on my birthday.

Memories of Grandma

I got a not entirely unexpected phone call over the weekend from my aunt in Hungary.
My grandma, Rebeka, passed away last Wednesday, peacefully in her sleep. She was aged 93.

The funeral is tomorrow, so unfortunately, there was no way that I'd be able to make it, but I spent some time over the weekend recollecting my happy memories of her. I was also thankful that my fiancée and I had at least been able to see her last month before she left us and had effectively received her blessing.

Though not my grandmother by blood, because she couldn't have any children, she adopted my mum and two others when she was young (I'm not sure of the exact age) and raised them like her own.

I'd been lucky to probably have spent the most time talking with my grandma since my mother's death in 2002.

I visited for a week in 2003 and stayed with her for most of that and then again in 2005 by which time she was in a care home. During that time, my Hungarian improved (it always starts of rather rusty due to no practice in the UK) and she'd sit down and tell me about my mum.

She told me how in 1956 when the Russian tanks poured back into Budapest and quashed the revolution, my mum met with her two best friends Julianna and Veronika and talked about leaving the country. My mum was 20 then and my grandma told me how she was a bit of a tomboy.

Well, the three of them headed off but when they got to the border with Austria and saw the guards patrolling with their guns and barbed wire my mum's two friends relented and came back.

My grandmother explained how my mum had then swum across a river at night to avoid the guards and had left the country. They didn't hear from her after this so assumed that she was dead.

Then a year later, a letter arrived telling them that she was alive and well in England working as an au pair having stayed in Austria and then France along the way!

She told me how pleased they'd all been to hear that my mum was alright and how happy they were when, a few years later, she was allowed to come back and visit and then even later got married and then when I was just a wee baby came back to show me off too.

I always remember my grandma smothering me with kisses. Way too many kisses in fact but that just showed how loving she was. She visited us in London twice, the first time with my grandfather. I remember her telling him off one day for telling daft stories and everyone just laughing their heads off at their silly argument, her face initially cross and then breaking down into laughter with us.

A friend of my mum, whom I still see, recalls during my grandma's second visit, how they ended up sitting in the garden together one day and even though my grandma spoke to her in Hungarian and my mum's friend back in English, they seemed to yap on for ages and got on like a house on fire.

Apparently the baffled look on my mum's face when she came out and saw the pair of them getting on so well despite the language barrier was a sight to see.

Rest in peace gran. You'll be missed but never forgotten.

Shuttlecock Sport

We completed our visit to my mum's home town by checking out Zoli, my 16 year old nephew's new sport, something called Shuttlecock (or labtol in Hungarian which translates literally to foot-feather.)

I'd never heard of it before and wasn't surprised to find out that, internationally, England are crap at it, though probably because nobody plays it over here. Hungary and Germany are the best teams in Europe, with Hungary apparently better at the moment, whilst Vietnam and China lead the rest of the world with the former being world champions (I think?

It's played across a net, much like badminton or volleyball, but the shuttlecock actually has feathers and the rubberised end is made up of a number of discs and a rubber dome. You can only hit the ball with you feet and parts of your body but not the hands.

Well, we had no idea what we were going to see when my nephew said, let's go down to the local school gym to watch a practice session. They obviously take it very seriously in Ujszasz and there were about twenty kids split across five areas of the gym, three of which were set up with a net supporting teams of three, two and single pairings taking on each other whilst the other two areas were for pairs practicing passing and shooting the shuttlecock at each other.

When someone was tired in one of the games, they'd drop out and enter the practice area whilst someone who'd been practicing would enter the game.

It was fascinating to watch their dedication. My cousin told me how he was looking forward to travelling to Germany and France to compete on an international level. I was mightily impressed.

After this we went back to my Uncle's house and had a lovely cold dinner. Lunch tends to be the main meal in Hungary and generally, Hungarian families will only eat something cold in the evening. In this case it was bread with slices of salami and peppers. Delicious in its own simply way really.

After this we bid our farewells at the train station and got on a more traditional, non compartmentalised and unfortunately slow train for the journey back into Budapest.

Though obviously still tempered by my gran's illness, I was nevertheless happy that we'd manage to achieve so much today and that everyone had managed to meet my fiancee.

The next day was our last and was in reality only a half day, so we packed, slept in and then went out for an early lunch finishing off with some fine Hungarian cakes from the lavish Cafe Gerbeaud.

A fitting end to yet another fine holiday.

Visiting the old neighbours - Pigs, pigeons and Spider

We then walked across the road to see if Veronika, one of my mum's best friends, was home. It was an unannounced visit and I pushed their doorbell not knowing if anyone would answer. A black Hungarian Puli dog ran up to the gate and stood his ground on the other side of the gate and with an impressively constant rhythmic and very loud "bark bark!"

Just as I was starting to think that perhaps they weren't in, I heard a familiar voice calling out from the back telling "Bogar" the dog ("Spider", in English) to shush.

It was Veronka, one of my mum's best friends from school days, and despite us having turned up unannounced, she opened her arms and kissed us both, radiated nothing but warmth towards us.

Once Spider had realised that we were no longer a threat, he quietened down and disappeared to the back of the garden whilst we were ushered in to the house where it soon became obvious from the fact that Pista, Veronka's husband was lying down on top of the sofa in just a pair of shorts, that they had both been taking an afternoon nap!

I apologised for disturbing them, but they would have none of it. We were shown into the front room and sat down on a pair of comfy chairs whilst Hungarian Palinka (Peach Schnaps) was poured out for both of us.

It was really potent stuff and in the heat we had to decline a second helping lest we pass out!

We sat and talked for a while, Veronka also getting us some nice cakes to eat, and me doing my best to translate to the other half so that she wouldn't feel out-of-sorts. The translation process was easier said than done, though, as Veronka and Pista moved from one topic to the next without pause, obviously trying to cram the last two years happenings and then some into our brief visit.

Afterwards, the other half told me that even though she didn't understand a word, she had managed to follow lots by observing how Veronka and Pista had been speaking, laughing and gesticulating throughout the conversation. They are a close couple, having been married for fifty odd years and it really shows in how comfortable they are with each other.

Before we left, they gave us a guided tour of their small menagerie of animals in the back. We saw their well fed, free range chickens running around in a large area in the back, then their house pigeons, and a sweet baby pigeon, something I'd never seen before. These pigeons were nothing like the scrawny, dirty things I've always seen in cities but well fed birds with clean and tidy feathers with a nice colour and sheen to them.

Finally we saw their huge black Hungarian Mangalica pig that they were fattening up. It was feeling particularly hot this afternoon, so it waddled out into the corner of its pigsty, relieved itself over the floor then proceeded to roll around in it's own pee. Lovely!

As a more hygienic alternative to this, Pista sprayed water over it and we watched as it lay on it's side and squirmed and squealed in obvious delight, something that made us all laugh.

It was after this that I looked at my watch and realised that we'd been away from my uncle's place for over two hours, so we bid our farewells and made our way back but now with a grin on both our faces at the memory of that happy pig...

Lunch with the family and happy reminiscences

We drove back to my uncle's house and ate a lovely Hungarian meal that my aunt had prepared for us. Before this my uncle had popped out and picked up my God-son, Gabriel, and his younger sister, Andi, from nursery and they joined us for the meal.

Andi, at two and a half, a year younger than Gabriel, seemed a bit more capable at the lunch table. She broke off bits of bread from a large slice and used it to mop up the juice from her dinner plate when she'd finished whilst Gabriel was a bit lazier and played around more. He was also much shyer than Andi who warmed to us instantly. I remember that it had taken three days before Gabriel had come out of his shell during my previous, longer visit but here was Andi, this time, with no such similar reservations. The other half played peek-a-boo with her and she loved it!

Over dinner it became obvious that my aunt and uncle had misunderstood me on the phone, when I had rung to say that I was coming to visit, as they had got a room and a bed ready for us to stay the night.

"No, it's alright, we're only here to visit for the day. We need to be back in Budapest tonight so that we can pack and get ready to fly off tomorrow afternoon," I had to explain to them.

It was still scorching in the house and I suggested to the other half that we go for a little stroll around town to walk off the food and so that I could show her my grandma's old house and perhaps visit one of the neighbours.

We ambled along the narrow pavement past gardens each with guard dogs too hot to bark at us until we arrived by my grandma's house, a place thick with memories for me. I remember arriving here by car, straight from the airport, years back when both my mum and dad were still alive, a dust cloud following us along the then rocky road and my grandparents running out to greet us. My shyness caused in part by my poor Hungarian language skills always made me feel awkward when we arrived but they'd all kiss me on both cheeks, my grandma many times over, and make me feel at home and loved. We'd only visit Hungary every other year, since that was all we could afford, and I'd always be taller each time they saw me, something I recall that they ALWAYS commented on!

I remember the smells and sounds of the house, now locked up and slowly falling apart and I couldn't help but feel sad, wishing that time would stand still, in just this one place, so that I could relive those happy Summers over and over...

The Hospital Visit

My grandma lay in bed, looking deflated, literally, from the jolly old lady that I remembered from my childhood. The doctors' didn't know what was wrong other than that there was something up with her stomach. I stood by one side of the bed and tentatively said hello. She looked confused but her deep blue eyes were still sharp and I thought that they looked beautiful.

She didn't know who I was though. At first she thought that I was her brother but then when we repeatedly said my childhood nickname (which embarrassingly translates into English as little white goose - apparently how I looked when I was born) I could finally see recognition cross her face.

She looked so fragile and seemed to fade in and out a bit but she still told me to visit more often. I introduced her to the other half and I realised that she'd understood what I'd said as she started to tell us to be good to each other and to never hurt each other, as her and her husband never had. It was sweet but also very sad. The other half cried a bit. Hospitals never bring back good memories.

I brushed a hand through my grandma's fine silver hair and told her that it still looked beautiful. She asked "Is it?" with almost a smile on her face but was now also starting to look more tired so we took this as cue to allow her to rest and said our goodbyes.

I felt bad for having to lie that I would come back to see her soon knowing that she probably wouldn't remember my promise though I think that it was worth it as it made her happy to hear me say it now.

We walked quietly back outside. I wondered if it would be the last time that I would see her. I remember her telling me, a few years previously, that she had never been ill until she hit 90.

But the sturdy old woman that she once was was now long gone. I didn't really know what else to do. It'd be all up to her now as to whether or not she'd want to go on. But then having outlived her husband and adopted daughter (my mum) and now lying helpless in a hospital bed, what would you choose?

Later on that day I gave my aunt some money to help with funeral costs, should the worst happen. I hoped it wouldn't but then having seen my grandma as she was now, a pale shadow of her former self, perhaps it would be for the best now?

A journey across the Great Hungarian Plain

In the four and a half days that we'd spent there so far, we were having a great time in Budapest.

As mentioned in a previous post, I'd failed to get hold of my uncle to let him know that I was coming to the country with a possible visit out to him, his family and my grandmother in the offing.

However, on our very first day in Budapest, right after we'd walked into our hotel room and were unpacking, my mobile rang.

It was my aunt! I couldn't believe it. Had she somehow found out that we were coming? No, it turned out that she was ringing for an altogether different reason. My grandma was ill and in hospital and things didn't look good. But then when you are 93, I guess illnesses become more of a pray and hope type thing.

She was so surprised when I told her that I was in the country. We arranged to come down on the Friday to visit everyone and go and see my grandma in hospital too. It was lucky that she had called as originally we were planning to go down on the Thursday, unannounced and, as it was, it turned out that nobody would have been home!

So we were very fortunate, however unfortunate the circumstances of her call, that we had managed to get in touch.

I'd printed out train schedules before leaving the UK off the excellent Elvira Hungarian railways site and we went along on the Thursday to buy tickets for a 9:45 train leaving the following day. It turned out to be extremely easy and the cost of tickets was just plain silly. Just over four pounds for each of us.

The next day, though, we overslept slightly, so it was a bit of a mad dash to the station. Things wouldn't have been so bad but for the fact that when we arrived, there were two trains leaving at 9:45, both going to the same destination and both on platforms that were on opposite ends of the station! I frantically looked through my printed out schedule and saw something written on the paper for our train that matched one of the trains listed on the departure boards.

We had to jog down to catch it and I spotted someone in a Hungarian railways uniform lounging by the train of whom I asked, in Hungarian, if this was the train for Ujszsaz. "Not for Ujszasz", she corrected me, "But, yes, going through Ujszasz."

That was good enough for me, though afterwards, once we had settled into a carriage and caught our collective breaths, it did suddenly occur to me that she might have meant that it was going through Ujszasz without stopping on the way to its destination. I prayed not!

The train was quite old, and it was one of those with a corridor running along the left side and compartments with doors along the right. We walked along the train until we found a compartment that wasn't full of people and settled ourselves into the comfortable seats.

I said "Jo napot" (good day) to the one other occupant, a woman tucked into a seat by the window facing the direction of the train reading her book, as I remember during one of my Hungarian language classes, years ago, that it was deemed polite to do this whenever you walked into shops and/or train carriages. I knew that that was time well spent after all!

The train left right on time and it wasn't long before we had trundled away from the city and its suburbs and were crossing the flat Great Hungarian Plain. Fields of corn, sunflowers and the occasional vineyard broken up by small towns with stations made up of a single sign and sometimes a platform whizzed by. We only stopped once before I recognised the surroundings and station that marked Ujszasz, our destination, and we quickly disembarked (not helped by a really non-yielding door) to find my uncle waiting for us on the platform.

It was nice to see him again. He explained that we would drive back to the house and then straight off to the main town where my grandma was in hospital. As we drove back to his place he gave us a brief scenic tour of Ujszasz taking in the new school buildings in the town and the new nursery that my God son now attends.

It all looked much as I remembered it from my previous visits, though each time I go there always appears to be at least one more tarmac road than there was before. It was sizzlingly hot too, something that further evoked childhood memories of hot Summer holidays spent here.

My uncle's house was also much as I had remembered it from two years previous bar the fact that the room that I had slept in then was now back to being a storage room. It was even hotter inside and there were lots of flies buzzing around, something that a town with so many farms and livestock can't avoid.

Within a few minutes we were off again to Szolnok to see my grandma...

Budapest

We woke up the next morning to find rather depressing looking grey clouds blotting out the sun. I sighed to myself and had visions of us wandering around Budapest huddled under my umbrella. But lo and behold, by the time we'd got ourselves sorted and ready to go, it started to show signs of brightening up.

Our first order of business was to find something to eat for breakfast. I rarely do hotel breakfasts as they force you to get up far too early when you're on holiday (a big no no in my book) and can charge you far more than you would pay for the same breakfast in a cafe next door. This was the case in New York last year and we never had a problem finding somewhere suitable to eat in Rome where otherwise our hotel would have charged us 7 euros for a single cup of juice and 8 euros for a small bowl of cereal! Ironically in Dubai, breakfast was included in the price but, like muppets, we completely forgot as we'd got so used to the routine of going out for breakfast in Rome it hadn't occurred to us that we could get it for free there!

Anyway, after a nice meal (in a cafe by the Basilica), and a scan through the two guide books that I'd bought (yes, I couldn't decide on which I'd preferred and they did complement each other quite well with one giving a good overview of walking routes and such like and the other giving you more detail on the background of places where you were going and handy tips that generally I wouldn't have known otherwise) we started our journey of exploration around Budapest.

Since we were by the Basilica, this was our first port of call. Last time I was here, my nephew and I climbed the 360 odd steps to get to the top of the dome only to discover that we could have taken a lift! This time I didn't make the same mistake twice and we were whisked up relatively quickly and with a lot less sweat than my last journey to the top with the added bonus of the fact that the clouds had now dissipated and the sun had come out.

It was turning out to be a lovely day for sightseeing!

Over the course of the next few days the weather got progressively better, the early cloud becoming wispier and wispier and breaking down much quicker until the Friday when we awoke to clear blue skies and temperatures touching the high 30s out in the countryside!

We walked most everywhere, and took the metro (Europe's oldest: circa 1896) from time-to-time to get from one side of the city to the other in double quick time. Budapest's metro is actually very good and trains never seemed as crowded as anything I've experienced in London. Perhaps this is because ticket prices for your typical local visitor from the Hungarian countryside are seen as too high and the numerous buses and trams make for a cheaper (though slower, in rush-hour) alternative.

As it was, a single fare was less than a pound and we once opted for a day travel card (the machines for which could be switched to English) when we knew we would be going backwards and forwards around the city a bit. Last time I bought a BudapestCard, a vehicle aimed squarely at tourists but which I now know from experience is a waste of money unless you are too lazy to buy a travelcard each day or do intend to traverse the city multiple times every day from a location in the suburbs. Also, the location of our hotel, right on the Danube between the two major bridges and within five minutes walk of the main pedestrianised shopping areas, somewhat negated the need for this as we could walk most places you'd want to.

So, over the next few days we took in all the sights including the other two other excellent scenic vantage points of Gellert Hill and the Fisherman's Bastion (where I'd highly recommend a walk behind the main well-trodden tourist road too for a peaceful tree-lined stroll back to the main square) and chilled out on the Thursday afternoon at the Széchenyi thermal baths, something that, surprisingly, I've never done in all my visits to the city before.

It was a sunny day with blue skies when we visited the baths in the City Park and such an interesting experience to boot. Though prices were all written out in English too, it was still all a bit confused but not quite knowing what to do was all part of the experience.

For instance the attendant who was letting people into the changing rooms was a bit "simple". His main job, in so far as we could tell, was to take your entry card and put it through a turnstile to gain you entry and exit. He told me in Hungarian that the rooms were full and that we'd have to wait which I translated to a number of non-Hungarian speakers behind us in the queue. After five minutes, with quite a queue building up, a local walked straight passed us and through the turnstile asking us why we were all waiting!

When I asked the attendant if we could go in too he acted as if he hadn't even noticed that there was a queue and let us through as if nothing untoward had happened. Very strange?!

The baths were lovely. You basically moved from pool to pool (both inside and out) trying out the different temperatures. Each had a sign telling you how long it was recommended you stay in (the hotter ones, no more than 10 mins.) and you basically just chilled out. There were lots of families, old men playing chess by the poolside and a number of bars and cafes strung around the outside pools outside of which you could sit and relax. We wished we gone there earlier on in the week as we probably would have gone back a few times at the end of each day.

Later on that evening, sitting outside in a restaurant on one of the main squares not too far from our hotel, we got yet another taste of freaky weather as a warm and pleasant evening suddenly turned nasty with, initially, gale force winds blowing everything in the square all over the place. The bonus was that the waiters showed us into a room around the side of the restaurant that was obviously used for private functions. It turned out to be quite a romantic evening with piped music, plush surroundings and a huge storm outside. Luckily the storm had abated, or at least the rainy part of it had by the time we left, so once again, another memorable evening was had by us both.

By Friday, we managed to take in all the sights bar the parliament tour, the tickets for which were sold out for the Thursday that we decided to go.

Our last full day, Friday, was to be spent visiting my family in the countryside, a nice contrast from the city.

To be continued...

A Stormy Start

So we sorted ourselves out, unpacked and settled into our room for the five nights that we would be there. After the Red Bull Air Race was done and dusted, and the crowds were starting to disperse, we were ready to head out to check out the surrounding area.

That was until the sun and blue skies were blotted out by a huge dark cloud that appeared suddenly out of nowhere. Just as suddenly, almost as we were about to walk out the door, a huge wind blew up and it started to absolutely lash down with rain.
On the same day last year, just after 9pm, a huge storm had blown in and a number of people had been killed by flying debris so we retreated to the safety of our room and looked out on the riverside at people running for cover. It was now a full blown storm with thunder and lightning.

I wondered how such a freak storm could occur twice in two years on the exact same date and worried that the evening's festivities would be ruined. I watched the news on Hungarian TV and tried hard to decipher what they were saying in rapido Hungarian.

About an hour later the storm passed and just as it was starting to get dark, the skies cleared and unbelievably it dried out and the evening carried on as if nothing had happened. Large crowds started to gather just before 9pm and we headed down to a decent vantage point, almost in front of our hotel.

The firework display was beautiful and lasted just over 20 minutes. Some were launched from the bridge in front of us, the rest from bridges North and South respectively of where we stood.

By the time it was finished, we were a bit peckish but struggled to find somewhere to eat as most decent looking places seemed to be shut. This was the disadvantage of not having had a chance to get our bearings earlier. In the end we managed to get a table in the hotel restaurant, which turned out to be a good idea as the goulash soup that we ordered turned out to be just what we needed!

Nagyon Finom! (Very Tasty!)

Off to the country of the Magyars

So after the chilled week in Rome and the mad, impulsive spontaneity that was our dash to Dubai for a ring, we were now set for the second of the (as originally planned) week long holidays in Europe.

Budapest, in Hungary, the country of my parents, was the destination and to be frank, I was a bit nervous as to how my Hungarian would hold up and if we would be able to meet up with any of my family out there.

What with all the rushing around from holiday to holiday, I didn't get a chance to ring my relatives in Hungary up until the week before we were due to go.

Essentially there are two groups of people that I generally visit whenever I've gone in the past (the last time having been two years ago now:

Those in Ujszasz
I go to this small town, 84km South East of Budapest, where my mum grew up, to visit my uncle, Gabi (short for Gabor) and his family (including my God-son Gabriel), my grandma and our old neighbours, Pista (Steve) and Veronka (Veronica) who used to be one of my mum's best friends in school.

Those in Ozd
I go to this town in the hills near the border with Slovakia and close to a beautiful national park, to visit my Godmother (also one of my mum's best friends) and her husband (both now in their 70s) . It's much more peaceful up in the hills but alas there are a lot less things to do too.

So I ring my uncle's number and I get a message (strangely in English) telling me that that is no longer a recognised number. I'm bemused...I try his mobile number. That also fails. "What?!"

So, brilliant. I'm coming to Hungary and I now have no way of sorting out a meeting with them!

I look up the train details on how to get to the town. It's only a 75 minute journey, so decide that regardless of whether or not I can get hold of them, we'll go along and see if they're in. If not, it'd be a nice trip to the countryside anyway...

Next I ring my Godmother. It connects. Hoorah! I talk to her and it turns out they will be home if I get a chance to come. The problem is that afterwards, I look up how I can get there and it turns out that it's a four hour journey by train, followed by a one hour car/bus journey. I seriously start to doubt that we'll get a chance to meet up with them as it would use up two days of our five day trip with one day already set aside for the much easier to get to Ujszasz.

I groan inwardly as I know my Godmother won't be very happy that I didn't come to see her. I've yet to call her up to apologise as I fear that I lack the language skills to explain myself fully.

Anyway, the journey to Budapest from Gatwick goes smoothly enough. It's early in the morning and we get a mini-cab to Victoria and then get the Gatwick Express out to the airport.

Confusion sets in for a while as "Malev", the Hungarian airline, isn't on the board listing which zone to go to for checking in. We have to go further into the airport to find a set of screens listing individual flights and check in zones. Quirkily, the zones go something like A-F and then skip to Z, which is the one that I need for my flight.

The plane was comfortable, (more so than 'Emirates' which I am starting to think is rather over-rated) the journey less than two hours and incredibly, for the first time in a month, our luggage comes out quickly.

I have to rely on my Hungarian language skills a lot sooner than I thought I would as it turns out that the driver of the cab I've arranged to take us to our hotel, the Sofitel, doesn't really speak English.

The other half looks on impressed as I gab on in Hungarian and sort out our return journey too and I feel relieved that I've managed to deal with the situation without too much hassle.

It's hot, 30+, and sunny outside and there's not a lot of traffic, August 20th being a national holiday in Hungary for St Stephen's Day, and we only really slow down a bit as we approach the hotel overlooking the Danube when there are some crowds for the Red Bull Air Race that is taking place a bit later.

Unfortunately we then had to wait an hour for our room to be made ready but are given complimentary drinks vouchers. The hotel's atrium looks very impressive and we marvel at the model of an old plane suspended from the ceiling.

Eventually, post-drinks we make it to our room and it's very good too. We look out the large windows and see a beautiful view of the Danube and the chain bridge across it.

An hour later and the Red Bull planes start to whizz by, We watch from our window whilst we relax after the journey. They'll also be a big fireworks display at 9pm tonight.

It's a great start to the holiday and I can't believe how well things have worked out for us over the past weeks...

In between...

In between Dubai and Budapest, I won a pair of tickets to see KT Tunstall live in a small, intimate gig in Covent Garden after which I discovered a very good (and apparently the oldest in London) chippie across the road.

The quest for The Ring

We had an excellent week in Rome and the plan was that a fortnight later we would be off to Budapest for yet another week so that I could introduce the other half to the country of my parents.

But, as things are wont to do, plans changed a few days after we had got back. As I mentioned before, I hadn't bought a proper engagement ring as not even the other half had any idea of what type of ring she'd like (when I'd surreptitiously raised the point in the past) so we'd thought that the weekend before we headed back off on holiday we'd go down do Hatton Garden ("the centre of London’s jewellery trade since way back in the mists of medieval time" according to their website) and see if we could find a ring there.

But then someone at work mentioned that buying a ring in Dubai, even with the cost of flying out and staying there would still work out saving us a lot more over Hatton Garden's prices. I did a bit of research on the interwub and sure enough a lot of others seemed to be saying the same thing.

So on the Thursday, we did a crazy thing, booked a flight and hotel out there and come Friday night we were flying out on a madcap scheme to get a ring without having the foggiest about the place that we were going to! In fact it was only thanks to a last minute purchase of a Lonely Planet city guide to Dubai at the airport that we even managed to find our way around at all!

Unfortunately the flight out was delayed by an hour thanks to a passenger who'd checked their luggage in but hadn't turned up for the flight (thanks a lot!) and then our luggage took a long time to arrive at the other end too. So rather than turning up at 3 in the morning, we didn't make it to the hotel until almost 5am.

We then got checked into a room only for me to walk in and find someone sound asleep in the bed, snoring away! I switched off the lights and walked out. In so far as I knew, they hadn't woken up. The receptionist apologised profusely and upgraded us to a larger room on the executive floor (which meant that we had to swipe a card through a reader on the lift to get it to stop there, which was pretty cool.)

Dubai was nice too. Very westernised but bloody hot! It averaged over 40 degrees every day and was 45 on our last day there (Monday.) At night it hovered around about 35 degrees.

So, with the help of our trusty guide book, we worked our way around the shopping malls (including one with a 450m ski slope inside) and gold and diamond centres in our hunt for a ring. To cut a long story, slightly shorter, we found one, or rather, got one custom built, on our second day out there.

Due to the fact that we were flying off the next day, the jewellery store manager drove us off to their workshop, ironically right next door to the gold and diamond centre that we had visited the night before, where we sat down in a nice air conditioned room with six Indians who each specialised in a part of the manufacture of our ring. One made the ring itself, another shaped and sized it, another fixed the mounting and measured for the size of the diamonds, another fitted the diamonds and a final one polished the ring. (The sixth guy didn't seem to get involved with our ring.) At each stage we were shown the progress of the ring and looked on approvingly.

The final product was then given to us to take outside and look at in natural sunlight. It sparkled so brightly that I have to admit, it took my breath away. It was beautiful, it was perfect and came in well under the budget that I'd set myself!

I got the certificates of authentication for each of the diamonds (the ring has three, one central and two smaller on the sides) and we left to enjoy the rest of our quick trip in the knowledge that the mission was well and truly accomplished.

To cap off the success story, I got the ring independently valued, just before we went to Budapest and it was valued at easily more than the value that we paid for it plus the price of the trip and boarding.

Cor Blimey!

Roman Holiday

Well, carrying on with the busy, busy, busy theme, Rome was so cool. We spent the first few days strolling around the main sites. The ancient Pantheon (lit only from a large hole in the centre of its dome) was a stones throw away from our hotel (in fact we could see it out of our window) and starting from there we worked our way around all the points of the compass.

Each night we would eat in a different restaurant (we only had two duff/tourist/rip-off meals) and paused from Italian food on Wednesday when we went to the Hard Rock Cafe where, even though we had to wait over two hours for a table, we actually had a good time and a nice tasty burger each too, and a long stroll back to our hotel afterwards to walk it all off. This is when we discovered that Rome in Summer at half-one in the morning is still a buzzing, vibrant city.

Of all the sights to be seen, Saint Peter's was my favourite. It literally takes your breath away. The sheer scale of it has to be seen to be believed. We visited early one evening and there was no queue whatsoever. In fact most everywhere we went in Rome had nothing bad queue-wise.

Florence, on the other hand, was queue central! We queued for an hour to go up to the top of the dome in it's Basilica and though the three-hundred plus steps were a bit knackering for some, the view was certainly worth it. The other half also enjoyed window shopping down some of Florence's swankier haute couture streets. It amazes me how she knows so much about fashion labels that most people have never heard of.

We finished our visit to Florence off with a visit to the Galleria dell'Accademia to see Michelangelo's "David" which was absolutely awesome (though no photos were allowed) and for which there were no queues at almost six in the evening as most tourist groups had headed off by then before we caught our train back to Rome.

We spent Friday afternoon in Pincio Park, overlooking Rome, having fun riding around in a two person pedalo (which is when I discovered that the other half is an awful backseat driver) and then did an afternoon trip on the Saturday out to Tivoli to see Hadrian's Villa, which wasn't really all that impressive, though being out in the open on a day when the sun was scorching didn't help, and the Villa d'Este which has impressive gardens with beautiful cool fountains and waterfalls a-plenty.

By the end of the trip neither of us wanted to leave but we finished off having a nice meal on the same table where I had proposed. A perfect end to a perfect holiday.

Little did we know at the time that just a week later, we would both be in Dubai!

But then, that's another story...

The Proposal

Well, boy has it been a packed few weeks for me!

Rome was brilliant. I'd even go so far as to say it was the best holiday that I've ever had.
Okay, so perhaps that view is tinted by the fact that I got engaged on the first night that I was out there but even without that, Rome is such a beautiful and interesting city to explore.

It's the first time that I've actually managed to work myself through a guidebook so thoroughly too. In the space of the eight days that we were there, we managed to cover every part of Rome, in some way or another, and also even managed to hop on a train up to Florence for the day.

The first night, of course was special. I splashed out on a nice meal for the two of us on the rooftop terrace of our hotel. It was slightly pre-tourist season (which kicked off in earnest in August) so the restaurant was not that full and we had turned up past the time that most would have had their dinner.

It was a warm night with a full moon and we were sat at a table overlooking the terrace and a splendid view of Rome was to be had with various church domes and statues lit up on the horizon.

I felt relaxed. I still wasn't sure if tonight was the night that I was going to "go for it" but I had a ring in my pocket, just-in-case! A pianist played in the background and the meal was exquisite. We laughed at the fact that the menu that I had been given had prices on whilst the other half's didn't.

They gave us some complementary sparkling white wine to start off with and then small spoons of pre-course munchies to clear our palettes between courses. We ordered a lovely bottle of rose wine which perfectly complimented our food and then as the meal proceeded and we talked about the future and how happy we were the sound of "Fly me to the moon" wafted across to us.

#Fill my life with song
And let me sing forevermore
You are all I hope for
All I worship and adore
In other words please be true
In other words I love you#

The moment was so perfect, that I couldn't have scripted it better myself.

I held her hand and said, "How would you like to make it a more permanent thing? I love you...Will you marry me?"

I remember her looking momentarily stunned. Her eyes grew as wide as saucers and her jaw dropped but after a few seconds it suddenly dawned on her what was happening and what I had asked and the word that I had been waiting for expectantly passed from her lips in a whisper "Yes."

We hugged and kissed and suddenly the world was a better place to be in.

I hadn't actually bought her a ring (since at that moment in time, even she didn't know what type of ring she would like) so instead I gave her my mum's engagement ring as a kind of place-holder. Whilst it was probably slightly large, she loved it and for one night only it fit her finger well. Her ring finger got thinner a day later and she couldn't wear it for fear of it slipping off but for that one night, it was perfect!

After the meal, we walked out of the hotel and strolled around the nearby streets, which bustle with people all night through, but now as an engaged couple who were happy and so in love...

(ps: Pictures are now up on doobrie.co.uk) More words to come...

Impulse

Not having even got around to properly blogging about Rome as yet, including the proposal and acceptance of marriage on the first night on a rooftop terrace overlooking the city with a full moon and a pianist singing Sinatra's "Fly Me To The Moon" in the background, I now find myself doing what is quite possibly the maddest, most impulsive thing in my life.

Today, the fiancee and I booked a flight for tomorrow to Dubai for a long weekend so that we can get her a good deal on a ring! How wacky is that?!

We had planned a quiet weekend going to Hatton Garden to find a nice ring but then we heard how you could get things so much cheaper in Dubai, even taking the flight and hotel costs into account, that we just went a bit crazy and booked a last minute deal for a VERY good price.

We are flying with Emirates and staying in a five star hotel for three nights and a friend of mine's sister works at Heathrow so has put us on the list for the executive lounge to boot!

My head has yet to stop spinning!!!!!