Hungarian Rhapsody

An overnight trip to Budapest – a city I’ve always enjoyed visiting.   The first flight isn’t until quite late, 0945, so I could leave home at the normal time and the routine of High Speed to St Pancras, Circle Line to Paddington and Heathrow Express works as well as it usually does and got me to Heathrow by 0845.   2 hours is a reasonable time for this journey, all told.   It could have been quicker but unless the circle line comes just exactly as I hit the platform at King’s Cross, I just miss a Heathrow Express.

A shame that the plane was 30 minutes late  but it could have been worse.  And what a contrast of weathers between Kent and Hungary.   As I walked to the station at Chilham it had started to bucket down with rain, and even with an umbrella, my shoes and trousers were soaked, one sleeve of my jacket was soaked and the rain had even got inside my bag.   Budapest, on the other hand, was sunny and 36º . 

The airport was easy to pass through – no queues and it was only half an hour to the hotel in a taxi, but I was so hot that I needed a shower straight away.

The Hungarians like to make a bit of a show of everything and after meetings we went on a tour of a network of wine caves before dinner.   But wherever we went we had to wear decorated capes which they said were for ‘wine knights’ but I thought made us look more like wine bishops.

Coming home was just a bit of a pain.   Tony offered to share a taxi to the airport but his plane was an hour and a half before mine and he was intending to allow himself an hour and a quarter to get to the airport when it only took about 30 minutes.   So I went with him on the basis that I would just sit in the lounge.   This was beyond passport control and when I got there I found the inbound plane was expected an hour late.   So three hours to wait.

As it was, the plane was only 45 minutes late arriving and the crew did an excellent job turning it round.   We were about half way through boarding when the captain said we had 13 minutes to be airborne and so would everyone help to get us going quickly – and, blow me, everyone cooperated and we were duly airborne 13 minutes later.

The layout of Ferihegy airport helps as the terminal as between the ends of two runways pointing in opposite directions.   This means that the runway for landing is always the one pointing to the terminal, giving a short taxi to the pier, and the one for take off is also the one where the end is by the terminal.   This certainly helped get us going quickly.

At Heathrow we were back at terminal 3 with buses to take us to the terminal.   For the first time, club passengers got their own bus which sped off one third full.   This got me through the terminal quickly and I just caught a Heathrow Express with, then,  plenty of spare time to get to St Pancras for the 2212 train.   All on time going home.⨪