Day four started out the same as day 3. Things are falling apart at work so I bought more Skype credits so I could call them. Seems the machines are coming unglued. They’ll be happy when I return I think.

I edited pictures and then we ventured out once again. This time we were in search of the Grand Market Hall to buy paprika. Hungarians use Paprika in everything so I wanted to get some real stuff not like the junk we get in supermarkets in the America. Paprika is a pepper that is used in it’s vegetable form as well as dried and ground up into powder. It comes in both sweet forms as well as hot forms. We tried to go to the Grand Market Hall earlier in the week but it was closed. We didn’t know what we would find but we still needed to find gifts for a few people and what better place to look than a Hungarian market? We’ve speculated on what the market used to be and everyone agreed it looked like an old train station.

Inside the market are old time photos and explanations so we find out it was always a market. It did have a railroad that came into it but only to deliver produce from the farmers. It was originally one of four markets in Budapest and has something like 10,000 meters of stall space. It felt a lot like the Musee Dorsay in Paris inside. There is unique ironwork railings everywhere. It was created in the late 1800’s which explains it’s extravagance. The communists never would have built something like this. Upstairs is a few eating places and bunches of tourist shops. Downstairs probably looks a lot like what it did 100 years ago with stalls selling meat, produce and of course paprika. We find a Hungarian cookbook here and eat some Hungarian food. The lady at the food counter threw salt over each shoulder every time I talked to here so maybe I was giving her bad spirits or something. The food was good even though we have no idea what it was. There was a goulash sort of thing that looked more like our goulash than the stuff we had earlier because it had noodles in it. We ate dinner for $9. I bought some gift paprika which comes with little burlap type bags and a spoon then I bought some for the kitchen.

Jade wanted a watermelon even though we were staying about 30 minutes for the market and we’d have to carry it home. Natalya and Piper said they’d help carry it so we bought one and they carried it home. Watermelon is a fruit that I don’t fully understand. It’s 99 percent water but we pay by the pound for it. I want to pay by the pound for the stuff that isn’t water and just add my own. It would be cheaper that way. Tomorrow we plan on heading to the cog wheel train and the children’s train, that is if we get up early enough.