Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Budapest Review: Great Market Hall


Budapest's Great Market Hall is in a beautiful nineteenth century brick building. Its main floor has produce stands and meat stalls and some stalls with spices, nuts, and honey. Who knew that walnuts and dried fruit soaked in honey is a standard Hungarian treat?

Notice the fur hats.
Upstairs is devoted to tourist paraphernalia. Those stalls get repetitive after a while--Hungarian folk dresses, embroidered tablecloths, painted eggs. Repeat.

But our favorite was the basement level, which was adeptly hidden from tourists like us. When we eventually found the staircase tucked away in a corner of the market, we found down there a supermarket filled with locals shopping for their New Year's feast, "sidewalk" stalls selling pliers


and sink traps, fishmongers, specialty meat shops (proud flesh), and pickle stands (sourness). Eleanor and Isaac treated the fish tanks as their own private aquariums, and the rest of us loved the pickles.
Pickles! All pickles!

Proud flesh: pigs' feet, tails, and snouts. Oh my.
Definitely worth a visit!

3 comments:

Lisa said...

It's funny to see that you posted this January 11, which is tomorrow for me. Haha. Can I just tell you how much I've enjoyed reading your blog? Because I have. Its fun it see pics of you at my mom and dad's. Your family sure are troopers to make that drive!

Ginny Wright said...

We also loved this part of the market. Totally agree about Budapest...our favorite city...maybe in the world.

Annette said...

Ginny--David told me you loved Budapest, and I can see why. Someday we'll have to go there at the same time!

Lisa--I'm glad you enjoy it! We loved, loved, loved seeing your mom and dad and everyone who was there. Yesterday Eleanor drew a picture of your dad--holding her on his lap!