Buda or Pest

Buda Castle overlooking the Danube from the hilly Buda side

The Parliament building on the flatter, sprawling Pest side

BUDAPEST - We arrived safely ahead of our luggage in Budapest.

After taking an illegal taxi ride into town from the airport (where we got no satisfaction from the baggage services people), we settled into our downtown hotel, a very nice Radisson just steps from the Danube and the Christmas markets -- and the British Embassy, re-assuring in case of any spontaneous anti-democracy uprisings.

A gigantic Advent Calendar at the Budapest Xmas Market

We explored the Christmas market, which I must say was well done - lots of authentic local crafts and food and drink, and live cultural acts all day long on a stage. The weather was appropriately frigid, but nothing a few vin chauds couldn't address. The only thing we ended up buying at the market wasn't at the market at all - clean underwear and extra sweaters at the H&M, a sort of upper scale Target-like chain store from the UK. UK and US chain stores and restaurants are quite prevalent here, blending in not-so-seamlessly with truly majestic old buildings, the natural, rugged beauty of the Danube and the stunningly bland, everyone-is-in-the-same-boat Soviet-era apartment buildings.

My Rotary home boys selling wine and saving the world

We spent the next day braving the cold and wandering around the Buda side of town, the smaller but more scenic and historic side of the city, sitting on top of a hill affording great views. We discovered a new-found appreciation for the history of this place, which was once the dominant empire in all of Europe, thanks largely to their legendary skills in warfare, especially on horseback, as well as their renowned superior intellect (ask any Hungarian and they'll agree...hey, coming from the people who invented the atomic-bomb, the ballpoint pen and the Rubics cube, who can argue?).

Hero's Square honors Hungary's history of kicking its neighbors asses, and protecting Europe from the rascally characters from the south

On Monday, we awoke to news that one of our bags (not mine) had made its way to Budapest. I was resigned to riding out the rest of the trip in itchy H&M underwear.

We had arranged for a tour of the city using a guide who drives tourists around in tiny Easter German 'classic' cars - the infamous Trabant, which could generously be described as a pre-cursor to the Mini (I later read an article on the "micro-car" era in Hungarian history during the 1950s when the Russians wouldn't allow them the build real cars so they used their superior Hungarian intellect to circumvent that restriction and build tiny vehicles that were sorta like cars, but not really...).

The Trabant: built for neither speed nor comfort

The cars are so small we needed two of them for the four of us, plus the drivers and guide. Our guide was a dude named Atilla, a tee-totaling, born-again Christian who proudly declared his opposition to the government in power (something I am sure his father couldn't have done at the same age) - he spoke of his participation in recent protest marches ("until the police showed up with guns - then I decided it was better to watch it all on TV").  I can't make this stuff up.

Atilla met us promptly in the hotel lobby.He rode shotgun in one car and gave the other car a walkie talkie to listen to his tour. Lindsey and I wisely opted for the better-heated of the two 25-year old beauties and we spent the morning navigating road construction and one-way streets through various corners of the city.

After a semi-informative tour (Atilla frequently suggested that one of us should check Google to confirm the answers to questions we posed to him. In between dodging questions, he pointed out properties that he represented in his other role as a real estate agent), we went to lunch at Marta's apartment. The lunch-at-a-native's-house was part of the tour and actually was what we were most looking forward to. Marta's was a young Budapestian who welcomed us warmly into her small, but nicely decorated apartment in a dull residential section of the city (Quarter 17, if memory serves me right - the neighborhoods are not quite as romantic sounding as Paris' Arrisdonments). She was a professional working gal (no, not that kind - but read on) and apparently worked from home. Not sure if her boss knows she moonlights as a private chef for Budapest's tourist crowd, but her meal (parpika chicken - Hungarians are famous for their paprika - pepper - dishes) was good. She spoke English well and was probably more insightful into the local culture than Atilla.

Széchenyi Bath in Budapest. Not for the feint of heart in December

After lunch Atilla dropped us off at the famous public bath house, which we viewed with some trepidation, mainly because our toes were still numb from the morning's tour in the sub-freezing cold. After some debate amongst ourselves, we figured we probably wouldn't see anyone we knew, donned out suits, braved the cold and took the plunge. It was a chillingly refreshing experience to say the least.

I did get chance to explore the city a bit on my own while the girls huddled in the warm hotel room one night to watch movies and eat Burger King. In fact, minutes after taking the photo of Buda Castle above,  I was propositioned by two of Budapest's finest working girls (I use the term girls loosely, no pun intended). 40,000HUF for the pair...Let there be no doubt that capitalism is alive and well in the post-Communist era here.

Suffice to say the Buda Castle makes a better picture.