RECESSION-PROOF TRAVEL BREAKS FOR THE BORED AND BELEAGUERED

(for Mam, who loved a bargain holiday, and Dad, who loved Yugoslavia)

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Budapest


A 3-in-one holiday in Budapest
It is time to get serious. The days of flying 1,500 miles to get a beach tan are retreating quicker than my dream of retirement. What appears to be needed is a little more creativity in the holiday selection process. Like short-haul, vaaaaaalue for money, three birds with one stone type breaks to take our minds off the misery, while not breaking the bank. Not to say that breaking the bank, or breaking into the bank, mightn’t be a good idea all round. That wasn’t a suggestion.
So here is one…      
3-in-one factor: Dentistry, Christmas market, opera
This one hit me in the middle of what was then the credit crunch and what is now the global meltdown. My 13 year old front crown fell into my dinner on a Friday night. I wasn't planning for this to happen in Spain, where I didn't speak the language. The next bit I am going to condense – superglue, Spanish dentist, Irish dentist, greying temporary replacement turning the colour of a breeze block. Then an unexpected 10-day work project earned me around €600 to work with.
Travelling solo can be the same price as paired travelling, or it can be half the price. It all depends on how it is done, and where you are going. When I travel alone, I usually trade down, ie book a room rather than self-catering, which I would prefer. I set this up online and here’s what I got, choosing strictly from gut instinct, price, or something that appealed in the website presentation:      
Dental Treatment
Prime Dental: Here I got a perfect match front crown for €255 and major root canal filling and repair of a back tooth for an additional €160. This was definitely one of the best dentists I have seen over a lifetime of cheap chocolates. They do major work - an English woman had already clocked up €8,000 worth of implants and a Croatian woman with dentist phobia was taking comfort from the English woman before starting €13,000-worth of the same. But they never tried to sell me anything extra, took just as much care over my small order and didn’t fawn over the big clients. You can see the Danube out the window if you have a mind to look. I could have cut my visit by a day or two, as they have their own lab and mould-to-crown only took Friday morning to Monday afternoon.      
Opera
The opera house, and the opera, were my payoff for the nine-hour wait in Linz railway station, the standing only Linz to Vienna, the ‘open wide’ and the slush, and I was lucky to get a last minute box seat – nothing else left - for around €30. (Tickets are available online for a fraction of that if you book far enough ahead). There was a post-Soviet earnestness about many of the older audience members in their heirloom outfits. Some were in full folklore regalia, and the usherettes wore a strange but striking outfit of thick tights, yellow leather boots and red satin hot pants. That gave me some comfort in my charity shop top, which in turn protected me from too many smart alec thoughts about others. There were fine fur coats too, but not as many as you would see in a Prague audience, and it was nice to see them all on the metro platform after the performance. The opera was Verdi's La Forza del Destino, commissioned by the Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg in case anyone wants to know, and much enjoyed by the emperor. It was heart-rending and awesome (so no dispute with the emperor there).  I wept, and not for the first time at an opera performed in the former Soviet bloc by angel sopranos and caramel tenors. I had to spend the first half in the roof after arriving late and only saw my fancy box for the much shorter second half. I told the expensive clients at the dentist's waiting room and they yawned.       
Christmas market
This was not as varied or impressive as Prague (the only other one I have been to). But the slush didn’t help and the root canal had knocked out my budget, so I made do with some of those Mozart chocolates to spread around the neighbourhood when I got home. Apart from the dentist’s waiting room, this was where I heard most English speakers, and I was thinking how nice it would have been to have someone with me and to go and have chestnuts and sticky cakes at an elegant cafĂ©, or hang out in a wine bar. I browsed around the market twice, as it was just down the road from the studio. My first visit was cut short by having to get back to the Rothschild 24 hour supermarket, where I had seen chickens roasting on a spit in the window. I have to say I couldn’t resist the urge to buy a chicken from a Rothschild in the current climate. In the end it was the chicken that left me running up and down back street ‘short cuts’ and made me late for the opera, but I kept the receipt. I should post it here.      
Deal of the trip
I got a 3 day travel pass from a booth in the metro station for all city transport. It cost around €12 from a booth in the metro station (exchange rate running around all over the place so I don’t know). The transport system was so absolutely easy and well run, and efficient and frequent, it was a joy to use. Having spent most of one day traipsing around a mall with a shopaholic fellow patient I met at the dentist’s before falling in to a wine bar, I took to the tramways the following day in the snow and circled and looped and backtracked around and across the city for hours. I had a ball (I’m easily amused). Budapest is big and beautiful, and must be gorgeous in summer. There are tired corners and swank malls and prettified medieval quarters and multiple lanes of whizzing traffic.     
Shock horror - missed the baths!
To be honest, I didn’t feel like going there on my own. I am saving these for the four in one trip, to be shared with company in, say, spring or summer.       
Accommodation:
Six nights at the Elite Apartments: €180 (special three nights for the price of 2 deal)
This was terrific! Central, warm, hassle-free, all new appliances and a powerful shower. It had a hob, microwave, fridge, freezer, wifi, TV with one English language news channel. 15 minute walk from the opera house on safe streets. I trawled the internet for nights and couldn’t find anything to match this for a single traveller, not even a room in a budget hotel. It was a special rate, but even without that it would be a steal for two people.      
Getting there and back
The RyanAir flight cost €20 round trip all in, credit card fees included. The round trip by train from Linz, because RyanAir don’t fly to Budapest in the winter, was six times that. So there’s room for better manoeuvres there.       
Verdict as a 3-in-1
Even without the opera, without the butt-freezing, heart-warming sight of the gorgeous parliament building through a snow shower across the fabulous, fabled Danube, even without the chicken and the skewed budget, the dental treatment would have cost over €800 in Ireland, or indeed Spain. So it’s a no contest.

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