A tourist trap and a surprisingly wonderful meal: Szentendre

Yesterday we visited a little town called Szentendre which lies about 20 miles North of Budapest on the shores of the Danube. It's a perfectly quaint little village with windy cobblestone streets, stone buildings and a picturesque town square.




We were dying to get out on the water and so a visit to this town by boat presented the perfect opportunity. We raced to catch the 10:30am boat and enjoyed an hour and a half ride up the Danube.



Naturally, because the town is so damn cute and so close to Budapest, it is also a tourist magnet and has all the fixings to cater to the typical traveling clod. Shops lined the streets filled with Hungarian souvenirs (made in China), horse and buggy rides abound (with singing drivers of course), and idyllic restaurants with outdoor seating sat one next to another all with identical menus. How would we decide what to eat for lunch?




No breakfast combined with an early morning run to catch the boat, left us starving when we arrived in Szentendre. But this didn't stop us from our usual crazymaking trek to find the perfect place to eat. While traveling, before we sit to eat we always torture ourselves trying to find that one hidden restaurant that has a good menu, nice ambiance and looks like locals eat there. After wandering and comparing identical tourist menus for 45 minutes, we threw up our hands and realized what we wanted most was to just sit in the picturesque square and eat some freaking food. So we did. And it was DELICIOUS!!!!

We ordered a salami and cheese plate to start and two big beers. Although it could've used some mustard, we gobbled it down appropriately.



I ordered a wonderful traditional beef soup called Paloc, which contains melt in your mouth beef chunks, green beans, potatoes and sour cream. Ugh, writing it makes me salivate. It was served in a little dangling metal crock with a flame. I've got to make this when we get home.



We rounded things out with a wonderfully scoopable plate of pork with mushroom sauce and spatzle. A light meal for a lovely day.



Being the traveling clods that we are, after our meal we thoroughly enjoyed a day perusing the many shops. We ended up finding some great stuff including a fabulous chef knife made by the Szankovits family whose been making knives for many generations.

And to top things off there was a marzipan museum! Yes you heard right, a museum of insanely intricate statutes made completely out of marzipan. It brought tears to my eyes to see the recently deceased Michael Jackson, standing before me, made out of marzipan. Jonny was excited about the Gorbachev bust. A truly amazing sight to behold.