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Venice is atrociously overpriced, crowded and touristy and we still love it. It has extracted our pound of flesh (which we have gained back plus plus). The second we board the vaporetto from Tronchetto (the car park) we feel weirdly happy, knowing full well that we will be gouged, swarmed and our senses assaulted with kitsch. Incidentally, the answer to the question that gets asked a lot is: No, we don’t smell anything.

Caffe Florian on the Piazza San Marco is the city’s most famous cafe, and it turns 300 in 2020, making it the oldest cafe in the world. Every would-be ruler of the planet has stopped by, from Napoleon to Hitler. The cafe probably overcharged them, too.

Nine euros (Php 414) for a cup of coffee! 13 for a croissant with ham in it. And if the orchestra is playing outside, 6 euros for the music.

The waiters are more elegant than the diners and you feel like you have to mind your manners or be judged.

But what an exterior (and the interiors aren’t plain, either). After coffee, you are compelled to conquer something.

Marvel, must all your posters look the same?

Had a good time at the cinema, but not as much fun as watching the first Avengers movie. (Warning: Spoilers.)

1. Not enough wisecracks, clever ripostes or general drollery. In fact we cannot remember a single line from the movie. In the first there was a quotable in every scene. Perhaps this was to give the new one a darker tone, but the result not really dark, just murky. What sets Marvel product apart from the ponderous self-important superhero movie is humor. Wit, irony, self-referential banter and the awareness of the essential silliness of the superhero movie.

2. Villain not particularly scary, even with Spader’s voice. Ultron in comic books much scarier.

3. For villain to be interesting, audience has to feel conflicted about him, i.e. like him despite his actions. Prime example: Loki. We’re not rooting for Ultron even a little.

4. Fight scenes are confusing, badly edited and not very thrilling, the outcomes obvious. We do like how Wanda was portrayed (by Elizabeth, the Olsen who eats); she could’ve just stood there and announced what she was doing, but she didn’t.

5. He’s probably not dead. No one in the comic book universe really dies. (He’s not dead, he’s pining for the fjords.) We still think Cap can lift Mjolnir, he just didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. Sucks to be good. Also being worthy to lift the hammer a useful shorthand to identify Vision as a good guy.

In real life, our cat Drogon is Vision because he can increase his mass when landing on furniture, thus obliterating paperboard bookshelf. Serves us right for buying cheap crap.

6. We don’t buy the romantic angle, probably because the movies have tried to pair off Black Widow with everyone.

7. Look, a hero with a normal life. Zzzzzzz.

8. The whole birth of Vision angle had too much explanation.

9. The simplest measure is: Were you happy when you left the theatre? Did you tell yourself, “I have to see that again!”?

Hmmm…no.

In all we get the impression that there were too many cooks. Making billions of dollars will not buy filmmakers peace, only interference.

10. If you hear yourself thinking: “This is the greatest disappointment ever, my life is ruined”, then you do not have what qualifies as a life.

Our Marvel movie rankings [covering only Marvel Studios-owned titles, not those licensed out to Columbia (Spider-Man) or Fox (X-Men and Fantastic Four), allowing the characters to occupy the same universe]

1. (tie) Avengers, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy
4. Iron Man
5. Iron Man 3
6. Avengers: Age of Ultron
7. Captain America: The First Avenger
8. Thor
9. Iron Man 2
10. Thor: The Dark World

P.S. The aircon needed a break so we went to the mall to soak up theirs. Saw Age of Ultron again and like it better. Not everything is enhanced by 4DX–the rocking makes us sleepy.

While wandering around the city, we heard that the New York Cafe in Budapest is the most beautiful cafe in the world. We don’t know who gives out these titles, but after hearing it many times we were intrigued enough to go. It’s one of the stops on the Hop-On Hop-Off bus tour we took (Most efficient option for people with no sense of direction who would otherwise waste hours looking for their destination, or end up taking taxis).

More beautiful than Caffe Florian in Venice? we thought. What nerve. (Just because our name was invented for The Merchant of Venice, we think we’re linked to Venice haha.)

Then we shut up because holy crap, this is what greeted us.

It’s two centuries younger than Florian, but it’s vast, light and airy and holy crap, those walls and ceilings. Built in the 1900s, it was recently renovated. At one point it was the world’s most beautiful warehouse.

In the early 20th C its regulars included the writers Gyula Krudy and Deszo Kosztolanyi (Thank you, NYRB Classics, or we would never have read them), and the filmmakers Alexander Korda and Michael Curtiz (Casablanca).

For our very late lunch we had a latte macchiato and a spaghetti with a very rich beef sauce that made dinner redundant. We like Hungarian home cooking. How you feel about it depends on how you like goulash (like a soupy mechado) and paprika, and we love the stuff. It’s so filling, you have to walk across Budapest to digest it.

So you dine under a fresco, and the cost of spaghetti and coffee: 6,370 Hungarian forints, or PHP977, which is cheap for that splendor.

Outside, bustling streets. The lamps are held up by devils.

This is one of exactly two cats we’ve seen on the whole trip. One was inside a carrier at the Market Hall in Budapest. This one was in a store window in Venice, around Castello. The sleeping cat looks like Saffy. (Saffy: That was me. I bilocated.)

Next to the cat, a sign telling people not to tap the glass. Some linguistic confusion here. “E io mi irrito!!!!”— The cat gets irritated by the tapping, the storekeeper gets irritated, or is the cat in the window because she annoyed the storekeeper?

Glum Sunday. You know all that eyeball-rolling stuff about “may puso” and “pusong Pinoy”? It’s true in Manny Pacquiao’s case. He really went after his opponent and tried to make it a fight (at least according to commentators. I woke up at 7am here and it was over). His opponent stood there calculating his profits, and occasionally throwing a punch when his calculations showed it would produce returns. Not for nothing is it “The Money Team”.

Budapest Keleti station

Glummer Saturday: My laptop, a 5-year-old Mac Air whose replacement is already on the way, was stolen on the train from Vienna to Budapest. I was in a mostly empty first class carriage, suitcase in front of me, backpack beside me, then I looked away for a second and pffft. Found it between the 1st class and dining cars, everything still in it including Guga the stuffed toy leopard (in which case it would be a kidnapping), ATM cards and earrings. The thief took my Mac and my emergency cash stash, which I don’t really need because I haven’t splurged or anything. (Just that morning I’d decided to put my travel documents, money, camera in my shoulder bag.)

So I summoned the train conductor and since we had no common language he thought I was looking for the electrical outlet. Fortunately I have travel insurance so I texted my old travel agent who sold it to me, who replied, “Report it to their hotline, thanks and God bless.” That’s helpful–you’re fired. Then I texted my new travel agent at Asia Intl, who’d stepped in when the old one couldn’t manage my train bookings. She told me what to do, beginning with filing a police report.

There is a lounge for first class train passengers, with coffee and food. Unlike airline travel, on trains the difference between first and second class is not so huge. You get more comfortable seats, a nicer carriage, cleaner WC, and lounges. On Austrian trains the waiter greets you with a block of Ritter chocolate.

On the bright side, I’ve actually set foot in a Hungarian police station, which is kind of thrilling. Interrogations have happened there. The officer looked like a skinny Simon Pegg. After the obligatory charades, he made me fill out a report.

It occurred to me that yesterday was almost the exact 10th anniversary of the time my empty wallet was stolen in Barcelona. Me and big cities beginning with B: Beware. I think of these losses as protection money to the universe to ensure that nothing worse happens. Still, my old Mac deserved better than to be stolen and resold by criminals (who did not steal the adaptor, idiots). It provided me with a living for 5 years. All the data is backed up, so enjoy the thousands of cat pictures and know that the Curse of the Mighty Goddess Bast has already befallen you.

I’m typing this in the hotel lobby computer. Will post whenever I can, but no photos till I get home this weekend.

P.S. I hated Barcelona, but I love Budapest. I could live here.

The second we checked into Budapest, the BBC reported that England’s new royal baby has arrived and she’s a girl. Mazel tov! Given the timing of the birth–breaking into the latest non-news on the upcoming Pacquiao-Mayweather match–and given that Manny Pacquiao named his daughter “Queen Elizabeth”, Kate and Wills should call their baby “Dionesia”.