Budapest

The Jewel of the Trip (so far) - Budapest

Our trip down from Slovakia took us past the cute hillside town of Banska Stiavnica, where we recharged with coffee and a trip to the tiny-moving-wooden figures museum (donating a grand 3 euro to the local economy…). We crossed the border to Hungary and, via a tiny ferry, made our way to the town of Szentendre – a tourist town a couple of dozen clicks outside the capital. Not much to see or do really – just got acquainted with the hammock and the local fast food delicacy of Langos. Essentially a piece of deep fried flat bread, with garlic juice drizzled all over it. ½ a euro buys 500 calories!

School Girls

Woodwork Mechanics

A quick lingual orientation – the capital of Hungary is BudaPesht. It is of great importance to the locals that their city not rhyme with Crest, Test or Rest. Or at least that’s the very first thing our walking tour guide said as we entered the city, or in fact two cities as east of the river Danube is Pest and the more hilly west, Buda. Cue the standard walking tour banter as we trekked across town over the next 3 hours – biggest this, oldest that, King this, Queen that and, as is the case nearly every city we have visited so far, Nazi occupation & Soviet Communism history. Unlike the previous countries we have visited – Hungary was Allied with the Germans during WWII, which adds a slightly different note to the talks… anyhow, I digress.

Budapest is an Awesome City (emphasis mine). It is easily on par with Prague, or perhaps higher as there are fewer tourists and friendlier locals. We actually had a 5 minute mime-chat with the checkout chick at the supermarket as she was trying to explain the special birthday sale the store was having the next day. I don’t think I actually spoke to a Czech czechout chick (haha, geddit?). Budapest is as beautiful to look at Paris, but with the city-is-actually-living vibe of London. It is also astonishingly cheap! Pint of Beer? 1 Euro. Glass of Wine? 1 Euro. Deep Fried Dough Snack (Langos)? 1 Euro. Metro Ticket? 1 Euro. Hungary doesn’t actually use the Euro, it uses the Forint, which is roughly 310 Forint per 1 Euro, but the emphasis on cheap doesn’t really translate (Pint of Beer? 360 Forint – See! now it looks expensive like Denmark or Norway!).

Budabest Campsite

Church on the hill

Budapest

That move

Sunset drinks

Sunset drinks

Impressive parliament building

Lavendar = Parliament spires

OMG I'm on a bike!!

Baths

Thermal Baths

After our walking/listening/walking tour, we visited the number 1 tourist attraction in Buda and Pest – the baths! There are something like 70 bath houses in the city, so of course we picked the most touristy and most expensive one to go to – the Szechenji Baths. The River Danube flows along a tectonic crack, which for some geological reason means its rather easy to get a plentiful supply of hot, clean water out of the earth. The baths exploit this perfectly as they have an abundance of pools (Szechenji had 18) all at different temperatures, ranging from 20 DegC to 38 DegC. Guidebooks recommend at least 2 hours to go and chill out. We spent 4 hours there, and could have stayed longer had our stomachs not started rumbling…

(We also had a massage at the place, but it was kind of weird… so the less said about that the better)

Onto dinner! We did the typically bad for the relationship thing of just wandering around looking for a good restaurant while hungry phenomenon. However, as we were completely chilled out from the baths, we stumbled into a rather nice seafood restaurant and snagged the last table! Fortune favours the Bold!

The next morning we spent madly trying to catch up on blog posting and washing. It turns out you need two very specific occurrences to align to do washing while in a campervan: 1) you need to find a campsite that has a working washing machine (not a given in Eastern Europe) and 2) you need sunshine (also not a given in April/May in EE). We finally had the stars align in Budapest. The afternoon we spent generally just wandering around the city, eating when we got hungry, drinking when we got thirsty (or when we needed Wifi). We also visited the Central Market, which was interesting; we played the game “guess which animal part that is at the butchers”. Hayley won with guessing what Pacal (Tripe) was.

Day 3 in Budapest involved climbing the Gellert Hill for fantastic views over the city, in between a million selfie sticks… Some general wandering around town (much like day 2 really) until we stumbled into BP’s version of central park – Margret Island! We rented one of the four wheeled dual seat tourist bike things and hooned around the park for an hour generally being a nuisance to other pathway users. There were medieval monastery ruins, Islamic minarets and even a mini zoo to look at!

We ended up for the sunset at a rooftop bar - 360Deg - for over priced cocktails (5 euro each!! outrage!). The view was amazing and we stayed for, perhaps, one too many drinks. Dinner was found in the Jewish district where Hayley’s venison and my fillet mignon was accompanied by a nice local pinot noir from the Szekszard region. We finished the day in a famous Ruin Pub (Szimpla Kert), which was a labyrinth of bars, tables, dancing area’s and stag/hen parties. Great fun!