Three days in London, at the Zetter Townhouses which was nice but a bit on the pricey side at $415 a night. Great small downstairs bar area though. Note for next trip: eat at St Johns. Malev Hungarian Airlines to Budapest for a weekend with cwr. Unfortunately a holiday weekend (All Saint's Day on Nov 1) so many bars and restaurants were closed but we managed what we could. Fantastic dinner at Onyx with 6 courses of updated Hungarian and wine parings. The bread is served with butter, cream cheese, and pork terrine, all of which were great with about 10 kinds of breads and cheese puffs. Just awesome. Perfect beef, foie gras three ways that were all like candy, more pork, and so on. Champagne breakfast with Hungarian sparkling at Villa Bagatele, which doubles as an interior design store, so a little over the top decoration-wise, but otherwise great. Excellent veal soup at Dunacorso and a nice lunch at Belvarosi Lugas Etterem including goose cracklings with hot hungarian peppers.A 2:50 train ride to Vienna for about $30. Great deal. Nice train. Would probably pop for 1st class next time. Hit Plachutta for boiled beef and even more goose liver, this time bruleed with a few red currants on top. A very good night at a few local wine bar/tasting room/buffets on a street a little northeast of central Vienna: Heuriger Christ, very nice whites with excellent wild boar "salami", more at Karl Lentner including some fantastic pork with crispy skin, and finishing at Richard Lentner. A fairly rare day in that all three were open on the same day, since we were out on a holiday. Funky opening hours for all the Heuriger in Vienna, due to the tax breaks they get on serving their local wine. Cool to know that there are around 1000 acres of vineyards within the (large) city limits of Vienna. It was, however, difficult to find a decent red. Another great experience at the Vienna Town Hall (Rathaus) with dinner, a waltz exposition, and a welcome from the mayor of Vienna.
One good thing from the flight back (VIE-LHR on BMI, LHR-SFO on UA) was the Posh Wrap veggie and feta wrap served warm on BMI. Best airline snack I've had in a while. Pretty standard United Airlines SFO-LHR flight on the way over.
Photos at aklink.tcb.net/pics/2011-eu.
