The tour now officially had started. We left Budapest by train Monday morning … our first destination being Eger, featuring a nice old town, a castle – and being famous for its grand red wines.

We made it into Eger around midday, George – the tour leader for this trip – got us started during an orientation walk … from here it was exploring on ourselves.

The evening saw us having dinner in a (particularly slow) restaurant in the Valley of the Beautiful Woman, an area full with traditional wine cellars.
After dinner, we made it down into one of those wine cellars, a wet, man-made cave maybe 15 meters underground for a wine tasting with Beatrix … probably one of the odder wine tastings, I ever had.
We made it through about eleven wines – the highlight clearly being the Bull’s Blood (Egri Bikavér – the local specialty, a blend of dry red wines … probably the most famous of Hungary) and the Gold Medal wine (we never made out, who actually awarded that medal … the wine was pretty good though). The whites and rosés however did not convince them … most of those I found simply horrible.