Nearly Neutral Travel

We woke up to beautiful sunshine in Ljubljana and got dressed for the warm weather, our first time in real summer clothes this trip. A brainstorm over breakfast led us to decide that it would make more sense for us to visit Bled, a lake-side town in the mountains, as a day trip today rather than tomorrow (we couldn’t stay in the hotel for an extra night so would need to move). After breakfast, we headed off to the bus station where we were served by a grumpy ticket man who didn’t like our 50 Euro note one bit… whoops! Anyway, we got on the bus for our one-hour journey where we planned to look at the mountain scenery on the way. In reality, though, Sara fell asleep and Oli couldn’t see the views as it started to rain! Not a good start. When we arrived, we decided to make the best of things and began our 6km walk round the lake as planned, even though we were wearing sandals. Thankfully, we had remembered our waterproofs so we didn’t feel too silly, at least half of us stayed dry!

A short distance round the lake, the rain eased and we stopped for lunch on a jetty with some inquisitive ducks for company and an amazing view of the whole lake and the church on the island in the centre. We were pretty impressed that the lake really was emerald green just as we’d heard. How??!!

Although we were a bit tired after our walk (our many days of sightseeing were catching up on us!) we decided to climb the steep hill to the castle. At the top, we found that we had to pay for entrance even to visit the cafe (contrary to the info in the guidebook) but we were glad we did, as the views alone were definitely worth the money. Neither of us had ever seen anything quite so picture-perfect. Unfortunately, the tour group (S’s and B’s as Sara’s Grandad would say) that descended on us were a less attractive proposition, so we didn’t stay too long!

After the castle, we decided it was only fair that we should give Bled the opportunity to impress us further with its speciality cake (kremna snežna rezina), which was cream and custard cream sandwiched between flaky pastry. Very tasty! Oli had some lovely hot chocolate which was so thick and rich you could eat it with a spoon, so he did and got it smeared all over his nose!

After this, we headed back to the bus for our return journey to Ljubljana. We followed a Lonely Planet recommendation for dinner and visited a Serbian restaurant for a really nice (and very funny) meal. The menu proved our Serbian language skills weren’t quite up to scratch, but thankfully the waitress helped us out. Even so, we didn’t have too much idea what we would be eating, but had a tasty meal of sausages and meatballs in delicious soft bread with butter/cheese – we still can’t agree what it was, but it tasted good!

We had a great laugh at our neighbouring table (who were British and also had a copy of LP, everyone else was local) because after a few glasses of wine she accidentally ordered a balaclava rather than baklava for pudding. They didn’t find it quite as funny as Sara did, but thankfully didn’t notice her giggles! We topped off the meal with some ice cream from the main square on the way back to our hotel.

We boarded our train in Budapest at 2pm with no problems finding our seats. We were thrilled that we seemed to have a compartment of six seats to ourselves, but couldn’t quite relax as we knew that someone could join us at any time (although later on, we realised that there was barely anyone on the train!) Anyway, it made for a really comfortable journey with lots of space.

We started on our packed lunch and found that Oli’s strawberry yoghurt had exploded, so Sara was very proud she’d thought to put it in a plastic bag! Later on, Sara napped while Oli continued to read his new copy of Marley and Me, which had him laughing lots and reading out extracts whenever Sara opened her eyes.

The weather was beautiful and Hungary was too, so we both spent a good amount of the journey gazing out of the window. The food we’d packed also had to last us for dinner too, so it was good that we’d bought bread, crackers, cheese triangles (one pack of many), Pombears, yoghurt, Haribo and lots of chocolate! As it started to get dark, we crossed the border to Slovenia and discovered that we had to move onto a different train, which was a bit of a surprise. We grabbed all of our things in a hurry and narrowly avoided forgetting Oli’s beloved trainers. The new train was just the same, and we drew the curtains which made it so cosy and feel like a bit of an adventure!

We arrived in Ljubljana about 11.30pm and found our hotel easily after a short walk. It was nice, simple, modern and clean, and we were really relieved to get to bed after a long day of travelling.

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.