Day 3 is the day we will be boarding our boat, although with the drought and very low water levels, our boat is unable to come to Budapest. (There are several boats docked, that have been stuck in the dock for 10 to 14 days.) Therefore, we’ll be shuttled to our boat via bus (about 90 miles away from Budapest) after our excursion for the day.
Thus our main excursion / event for today is visiting a world famous horse farm, the Lazar Farms. They are two brothers who are multi-world champion carriage racers. The farm is located a good 45 minutes out of Budapest.
The bus ride to the farm was uneventful, and on arriving we discovered it is a VERY beautiful location, set up as a visiting place for all of the locals (they provide a show, provide lunch, take you on a wagon ride, show you the stables, show you the trophy room, and then give you a tour of their farm.
On the farm they have Puli (curly haired dogs), curly haired pigs, chickens, turkeys, curly horn sheep all on display. (including a bunny in the hen-house)
Again, since this is all we did today (except ride a bus), here are the pics:
General Pics of the grounds (which were beautiful):
The arena / track area (back right above) is where they provided the show.
One of the carriage teams
A csikos (cowboy)
A period Hungarian cavalryman:
Carriage team at speed:
Period cavalryman showing us (kind of) the famous Parthian Shot… (I say kind of because technically he wasn’t riding backwards on the horse as they road away, so I guess this is more just the regularly archery ????)
Another view/shot:
Attacking with spear:
To the csikos, their horses were everything, so they were well trained:
They even slept with their horses:
The ladies were excellent horse riders as well:
There was a famous painting showing a csikos riding 5 horses at once. A csikos saw the painting, and decided to make it come true… thus started the tradition: (Standing one leg on each of the 2 rear horses, with reigns to the front 3.)
And while the pictures don’t clearly show it, he was going at speed like this.
A close up of one of our favorite csikos with his whip (he is the one who drove our wagon).
And of course, here is what they fed us:
In this lovely chateau type place:
After we were done with the horse ranch, we got back on the bus for the roughly 2-hour ride to our embarkation point (somewhere in the middle of no-where that they could dock):
And here is our cabin (the entire outer wall is a sliding glass door / window for easy viewing):
(and yes, the bathroom is quite reasonable for a sailing vessel)
And finally… yes it has all of the creature comforts of home… including a charcoal and a grill. (although after having spent time with some of our ship-mates, there is NO WAY I would want any of them starting a fire on the boat… NOPE.)
Cheers,
Tim & Jay