Category: 2010-09 Berlin to Pula

Continuing the theme, we began the day at some more thermal baths (Széchenyi Fürdő).  Unlike yesterday, these were all outside, with two hot pools and one large cool pool surrounded by charming yellow buildings. We had a great laugh in some circular rapids which had everyone a bit out of control, prompting some surprise collisions. This time, we knew exactly what we were doing and worked the changing cabins and their baffling wristband system like pros.

After our swim, we walked through Városliget Park to Heroes Square and then down Andrássy Utca (compared in the guidebook to 5th Avenue in New York). We saw embassies and, later on, some very upmarket shops.

We managed to seek out some more Lángos for lunch from a hidden market in a side street, and they were just as good as yesterday. We also stumbled across a second-hand English bookshop (such a find).  Oli needed a book for tomorrow’s 9-hour train, so we got him a copy of Marley and Me. We wandered around for ages looking for an Internet cafe, before eventually heading back to our hotel to ask the front desk for directions. They surprised us by directing us up the stairs to the hotel’s free computer! We read our emails to find out that Sara had got the teaching job she was after – really pleased!

After another hotel afternoon tea, we got back to sightseeing in central Pest, wandering around lovely pedestrian streets with lots of outside cafes.

It was such a beautiful afternoon and we saw Budapest in a whole new light. We stopped at Gerbeaud (apparently famous, although this passed us by until afterwards) and Sara had an awesome Baileys cake. The weather was still beautiful as we walked down the banks of the Danube.

We passed the parliament building, which was apparently modelled on Westminster.

We ended up near Margaret Island, which Sara was very keen to see, so we kept walking until we got there. This was a massive island in the Danube covered in parkland, gardens and encircled by a running track. It was very different from the rest of busy Budapest. By then we’d walked so far that we were exhausted, so we jumped on a bus hoping that it would take us somewhere useful. Thankfully, it dropped us off next to a metro station, making getting back to the hotel easy. We rounded the day off with a very late dinner on another pedestrianised street.

Overall, Budapest really grew on us from a polluted building site to a chilled out and scenic city.  We’ve just checked out of our hotel and are about to grab some lunch (and dinner) for our long train journey to Ljubljana.

We had another good hotel breakfast before heading to some famous thermal baths (Gellért Fürdő). The guidebook had described them as like swimming in a cathedral – in a beautiful Art Nouveau style. Before we got that far, though, we had to pass several tests of wit and ingenuity – namely to find the entrance, pay and get into our changing cabin.  All were trickier than they sounded! Once inside, we concluded that the spectacular surroundings were well worth the effort.  We swam both inside and outside in the thermal and swimming pools, and it was the perfect relaxing activity after a busy two weeks.  Sara was a bit upset when her hair got wet in the wave pool, but with hindsight perhaps that was a foregone conclusion! 

Having worked up an appetite, we went to the city’s largest indoor market for lunch.  Here, we tried Lángos, which was a large piece of deep-fried dough (a bit like a giant Yorkshire pudding) topped with sour cream and cheese. Like most Hungarian food we’d tried so far, it was so bad, yet so, so good! As we wandered around, we also saw heaps of fresh produce including big strings of chillies, lots of paprika and meat. 

Next, we took the metro and walked up Castle Hill. It had been really grey and hazy all day, which perhaps hadn’t sold the city to us too well, but the sun did come out as we enjoyed the spectacular views from the top of the castle.

Sara thought that the castle towers looked like something from a fairytale.

We walked around the castle (which was more like a small town) and saw the Royal Palace, cathedral and funicular railway. Then we headed back to the hotel on continental Europe’s oldest metro (great trivia), which was pretty musical, playing a tune at each stop. Oli couldn’t get enough of it! We at dinner at another LP recommendation called Menza, a pretty upmarket restaurant by our standards, although we ate some traditional food at a great price. We really laughed at Sara’s dinner, which was basically a vegetarian stew. We could tell that the Hungarians didn’t think much of vegetarian food as they had topped it with a fat German sausage to bulk up the meat content! We washed our dinner down with a few cocktails before bed.

We took another comfortable train for our shortest journey yet, between Vienna and Budapest.  The journey was just under three hours and, true to form, Sara managed to sleep most of the way. We had the usual confusion at the station trying to sort out finding a city map, local currency and travel cards before taking the metro to our hotel. Oli’s misplaced map-reading optimism led us in the wrong direction for a while, but we got there in the end! 

We made our usual mistake of judging a city from what we saw on the journey between the train station and our hotel; all we could see were building sites and slightly dilapidated streets. However, the hotel was comfortable and clean, and we took advantage of the free refreshments on arrival. As usual, we managed to lock the safe with the wrong code…although this time it really was a safe with no instructions and a mind of its own! We’d read about a pedestrian street with lots of good food options and it turned out to be very close to our hotel, so we took a stroll there to get some dinner.  It was all lit up and had a lovely atmosphere, really buzzy. We had some tasty and very hearty goulash soup to start, and were full before our main course arrived!