Farger Cafe and Tom George Restaurant- breakfast and lunch in Budapest

This Sunday Budapest was deserted and very, very quiet.
Tomorrow (the 15th of March) Hungarians will celebrate the Revolution Day and the War of Independence against the Austrian-Habsburg rule in 1848-49...so I guess most of the Hungarians are now on holiday (or at least outside of Budapest).
Outside the Parliament (close to our apartment) there are hundreds of flags hanging or planted in front of it and people wear little red, white and green pins to express their pride in being Hungarian,

Pic 1. Hungarian flags

So yesterday we decided to take it easy and have breakfast in a nice cafe very close to our apartment.
The Cafe is called Farger (I have already mentioned it in ne of my previous posts) and its a very relaxing place where to drink coffee, surf on the internet or simply watch people.

Pic 2. The entrance

Pic 3. Cups hanging in the window

Pic 4. Plenty of magazines for free (and luckily in English, too).

Pic 5. Fanta (the owner's dog..ok, guess why his name is Fanta?)

Pic 6. Fanta waiting for a chocolate croissant

After visiting Erox at the Hotel President we had lunch in a restaurant close to the Basilika, which is one of the main churches in Budapest. Tom George is -despite the name- an Italian restaurant run by Italians with Italian food (and unfortunately Italian and not Hungarina prices...but it's definitely worth every Hungarian forint!)

Pic 7. The entrance to Tom George

Pics 8-9. I love the ceiling decorations and lamps

We spent the all afternoon at the IKEA (shopping there turned out to be as tiring as in Italy) and we left the place with such a bad headache after having bought nothing really interesting...brooms, buckets, rubbish bins and towels...).

On the way back home we took a walk and I took these two pics of Budapest at night.

Pic 10. The Parliament and Tram n 2

Pic 11. The Museum of Ethnography opposite the Parliament and in front of our apartment.



2 days in Budapest- a movie, 3 restaurants, 2 coffee shops, a miraculous tea...and a house to refurnish!

The two days (from Thursday to Saturday) I spent in Budapest went sooo fast..and I had so much fun with my Husbee!
On Thursday night we went to the cinema. I love the fact that most of the movies in Hungary are screened in the original language, something which is very very rare in Italy. So we took the metro (btw, metro tickets are getting expensive! a single ticket costs 320 HUF, which is nearly 1,20 Euro) and we headed to a mall called WestEnd, which is huge, very modern, with lots of shops (from Mango to Mediamarkt) and some incredible restaurants.
WestEnd is located near Nyugati, which is one of the main railway station in Budapest. It is in downtown Pest, in a very lively area. We bought our tickets (one ticket costs 1,200 HUF, almost 5 euro) for London Boulevard (a British movie starring Keira Knightley, and Colin Farrell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Boulevard) and some snacks...what would be a movie without some popcorn???

We did enjoy the movie, although I was expecting a romance and the movie is definitely more a gangster movie....(I should have imagined it as it was Husbee to select it!!)
Before going back to the hotel we stopped in a restaurant called Leroy which is on the third floor of the mall...and oh my God..I had the best wiener schnitzel of my life...it was gigantic and super yummy). Look here!!

The next day we had breakfast in a very nice cafe called Cafe Augustusz, in Kossuth Lajos, in central Pest. I love the atmosphere of this coffee shop, and all the cakes and pastries they serve. We ordered coffee and pogacsa, a type of savory scone which is very common in Hungary. There are many different types of pogacsa: with cheese (the one I had, pork, cabbage, garlic, red onion, sesame seeds). Hungarians eat pogacsa all day long...and if you visit Hungary, you must try one!

After breakfast  we decided to go and have a look at some furniture shops. We wanted to try some really Hungarian shops and avoid going to the IKEA once again. Well, I have nothing to say against Hungarian furniture, but after having spent a morning at Butorhaz and Domus, I decided that maybe IKEA is much more my style!! Most of the shops we visited had ugly furniture in ugly materials and ugly colors. It might be it's me who is a Western Spoiled Italian, but have a look yourself at this pic and tell me what you think!

YESSSS. it was better to leave and look for the exit (kijarat!!!)

We spent the whole Friday night trying to make sense of the many pieces IKEA had delivered to our house the week before.

Despair overwhelmed us and we decided to call for someone who could help us in making a bed, a table, two couches, an armchairs, 6 chairs out of these boxes!!!!

To cheer us up, after having spent the afternoon trying to figure out how many pieces make up a couch, we decided to head to the coffee shop at the Italian Institute of Culture, which is worth a visit even if you are not Italian and are not interested in Italy. This little coffee shop is in Bródy S. utca 8...and it's fully of young and nice people...and of course it serves great (Italian) coffee!!

On Saturday, My Beloved Husbee made a great discovery. A friend suggested him to go to a pharmacy and buy the SZUZ TEA (also called the virgin tea) which seems to be a Chinese super efficient medicine if you want to loose weight (and my Husbee wants!). So we bought it and Husbee has started to take this brown capsules twice a day. I ll keep you posted about the miraculous effect (ha, ha) of this Chinese-Hungarian drug!!

Our stay in Budapest ended yesterday at Ferihegy 1, the terminal 1 of the airport. I can 't wait to go back to Budapest!!