Today we start with an official pre-cruise activity. We will be visiting the ancient Roman city of Aquincum. It was discovered in 1894 and is now a museum and archeological site.

Located there are preserved walls, baths, houses, an aqueduct and a forum that help to document military, civic and religious life at the time. It’s a historical window to Ancient Rome.

A quick bus ride took us there as it is located in the old Buda area. Our guide, Anna, led us through the ruins and did a great job of explaining the ruins and how they have interpreted life to have been like for the people living there.

It was all very interesting, but the feature that intrigued people the most were the baths and toilets. Forget the day-to-day living and merchant set up…but how did they get water to the baths and heat it and did they have to share toilet facilities?

If your curiosity is running rampant, the water came from the aqueduct via smaller clay pipes and was warmed using hot air from a furnace that was kept burning day and night. The farther away from the furnace, the cooler the water would be. As for toilet-sharing, there was supposedly separate times for men and women to use the group facilities.

After visiting this Hungarian Pompeii, we boarded the bus and headed over to the Pest side of the city for a bit of a walk around.

We had a small group that was with Anna, as many folks went back to the hotel directly. We were able to personalize the walk with questions and personal stories from Anna and a woman whose grandmother lived in Budapest during the years of war and unrest. It was great that they chose to share some details with the rest of us.

Our walk took us through the city center by the US embassy, through Liberty Park, then by the war memorial and over to Saint Stephan’s Basilica.

We made an early dinner reservation at a small Italian restaurant called ‘Comme Chez Soi‘. Now before you start thinking that it was just old folks looking for the senior special, we had an ulterior motive. We were thinking that we could squeeze in an evening river cruise when the lights come on. More on that later.

The restaurant is not large and all the tables were taken. We were definitely happy that we made reservations or we wouldn’t have gotten in – even for an early dinner.

The restaurant may have been small, but as they say: “Good things come in small packages!”. The staff were all wonderful – very personable, attentive and just plain nice!

As for the food, everything was fresh, delicious and house-made. We both started with a caprese salad, then Sue chose pappardelle with shrimp scampi. I went with the tagliatelle carbonara and we punctuated the meal with a bottle of Antinori Chianti Classico..

We even managed to sneak in a tiramisu for dessert. Our waiter then brought over a limoncello to put a cap on our meal.

We had a delightful meal and would definitely recommend the restaurant should you find yourself in Budapest.

Our walk back to the hotel found us moving quickly, as the clouds had returned and it was windier and chillier with a bit of drizzle. We hoped that it would pass, but alas, it didn’t.

We deliberated a tiny bit and then decided to forgo the boat ride, instead spending a relaxing evening in the hotel watching the riverboats and listening to music while resting our legs. We will see the buildings lit up when we sail from Budapest Sunday evening.