Budapest, day 3: What's with the weather?

It was so windy last night that we hardly slept. As usual, the first thing my husband does when arriving in a hotel room is open the window. Unfortunately, when he closed it, it didn't seal quite right. With the wind gusting over 100 kph (62 mph, 27 mps), it slowly opened this gap until it was roaring like a freight train. Re-closing the window at 4 AM helped, but it was still hard to sleep.

The breakfast buffet at the hotel was wonderful and even included a dessert section in addition to the pastry section, the bread, cheese, cold cuts, cereals, yogurts, bacon, sausages, eggs, and local specialties. Because it was raining as well as cold and windy, I went to the gym and spent half an hour on the elliptical (cross-trainer) while trying to read my guidebook. I brought along plenty of work to do, so I stayed in the room working until I got too hungry. It was still super windy and a little rainy, but I walked around the southern half of the castle district and ate some lasagna in a little cafe.

In this picture, you can see the hotel at the end of the street with the white building and the odd modern tower. The other picture is the view from the gym which shows both the church ruins and the modern building.

I believe this structure, right by the hotel, was built for the world's fair in 1896 as a tourist attraction. I find that kind of amusing, but it's definitely cool looking, and the view is amazing.

The wind was bitter cold, so I came in to thaw out for a while before venturing out again for "dinner" at my favorite cake shop. I got there right before they closed, so I ended up eating back in my room. There are a lot of channels on the TV, but the only ones in English are CNN, BBC, and CNBC. It seemed like everyone was reporting the same news, but I did eventually learn that all of Eastern Europe was being pummeled by a huge rotating storm (like a hurricane, but over land) with record winds and flooding. Yes, I'd checked the weather forecast before we left Sweden, but it had predicted rain only for the first day, so I was still optimistic.