Budapest Market

Our guide Reka took us to the very large market building a couple of blocks from our ship's dock.

The view from the second level. It's really an immense hall.

 

Food vendors

The ground floor is almost entirely stalls selling produce, meat, baked goods, sausage, and liquor. It made for a really colorful display. Paprika was everywhere, in every shape and form. This is Hungary, after all.

This stall sold nothing but sausage, in many varieties.

Caviar from Russia.

Here are a few Hungarian words we can make out: Spagetti and Makaróni.

And here are some that I have no clue about.

There were fresh fruit and vegetables in abundance.

Pickled vegetables with a Halloween theme.

Oil with paprika. The bottle on the left is priced at about US $6.

Paprika and garlic, essentials for Hungarian cooking.

Most of the stalls had very nice presentations like this. This one has the paprika and garlic, and much more besides.

Colorful peppers; pistachios, pumpkin seeds.

 

High school German or French isn't much help with this.

Paprika on the left, in a color I wouldn't have expected. Are the green, red, and yellow bell peppers on the right really from California?

Packaged paprika of all types.

Lots of sauces and honey at this stall. And paprika, of course.

From all appearances, we would call this "salsa".

An elaborate display of liquor at this stall.

If you haven't had enough paprika yet, you can drink some.

Yummy things at a baker's stall.

 

At a candy stall, lots of marzipan.

Clothing and craft vendors

The second level of the market is mostly devoted to stalls selling things other than food.

A display of magazines. Did you know that National Geographic has a Hungarian edition?

Embroidered linens were plentiful.

 

Not just linens, but embroidered clothing as well.

Colorful chess sets, about US $18.

Hungarian craft figures.

 

Lots of hand painted items.

Fridge magnets for every taste: Volkswagen, Citroën, Stalin …

The Trabant, a car produced behind the Iron Curtain, was of low quality and was the butt of lots of jokes. The best one I remember is: A man walks into an auto-parts store and says to the clerk, "Can I get a fuel cap for a Trabant?" The clerk replies, "Sounds like a fair trade to me."

Fridge magnets all.

More souvenirs.

Sets of buttons for knitted items?

Enameled ware was popular.

A display of leather goods.

Whimsical ceramics.

Some stalls on the upper level were restaurants, like a food court at a mall in the US.

An aid for learning the multiplication table.

The warning sign on the escalator seems pretty insistent. I hope it's not that important, as none of us can read it.

We had lunch on the ship, and then took to the buses again for an excursion into the countryside. We'll rejoin the ship north of Budapest, part of the way to Vienna.