DIARY OF AN ADVENTURER: I WASN'T EXPECTING THAT

I wasn't really sure what to expect upon arriving in Budapest, but Ellie and I were absolutely blown away as we both fell in love with the city! I can understand without a doubt why Budapest has been named the 25th most popular city in the world and the 6th in Europe!

We did not get off to a good start. I misjudged the distance from the train station to our hostel, and we ended up walking in the rain for half an hour, bags in tow, after very little sleep from the overnight train. We weren't able to check in right away either so we sat in the hostel eating our leftovers for breakfast, a loaf of bread and a jar of Nutella - real poor travellers breakfast! Luckily things only improved from there!

Despite the weather and being so tired we could have crawled back into bed, we decided that we had to go exploring. We only had two days in Budapest and needed to make the most of it. We did a loop towards the east of the city, past St Stevens Basillica, the Hungarian National Museum and through the security for the Jewish Memorial - we decided that we had learnt enough about European history from the previous three cities, and we were getting really hangry (hungry and grumpy!) by this point so headed back along the river towards the town centre. We went via the Central Market Hall, a food market with heaps of stalls of traditional hungarian food.

After lunch we walked further along the river to Vörösmarty tér, a central square, where we took part in a free walking tour. The tour took us further along the river to the west this time and across the Chain Bridge, to the Buda Castle in the hills, the Fishermans Bastion and St Matthais Church. It was really interesting and a great way to learn a bit about the city. The city is is divided into two districts, Buda and Pest. The Buda side is the old city where the castle is and the Pest side is the newer part of the city. Originally two seperate cities they were united into a single city in 1873.

Needless to say we had an early night, exhaused from the amount of walking we had done that day and the fact that we were running on so little sleep!

On Day Two we spent some more time on the Buda side of the River Danube where the Castle is. We climbed a hill to Budapests own Statue of Liberty, where we had amazing views right out across the Pest side of the river and could see just how spread out the city is. We tried to take a shortcut through a park to the castle, as it looked like you could on the map, but we ended up walking along a major motorway and having to go all the way around. We chanced upon the Changing of the Guards at the castle and a band playing some music.

After taking about 300 photos of the amazing view, we wandered further west along the river to Margaret Island, a small bit of land halfway across a bridge that connects the two districts. The whole island is a massive park for locals to enjoy and it has a very cool fountain on it which shoots water up into the air, in time to some music which is played on every hour. We spent a couple of hours there and watched the fountain play a few times, sitting in the sun eating ice creams.

As we started to get a bit hungry, we wandered back to our hostel along the Pest side of the river, past the impressive Parliment Building. Since we had walked so much we treated ourselves to an all you can eat and drink buffet which costed us about $40 each. It was a super classy place and between the two of us we drank three bottles of champagne and ate about five plates of food each - we obviously had to get our moneys worth!

The plan was to go out on a pub crawl afterwards, but since it was still so early we made the mistake of heading up to our hostel for an hour or so for a nap. I crashed out in bed, completely exhausted and slept through the whole night, despite Ellies efforts to get me back up!

Unfortunately we had to leave Budapest the following day, but we had an open train ticket so could take any trains that were running that day. Because we loved Budapest so much we decided to spend the day and take one of the evening trains across to Vienna. We spent the morning wandering down Andrássy Avenue to Heros Square, a UNESCO world heritage site where there are heaps of statues of important historical people.

We then rode the Millennium Underground Railway, the second-oldest metro line in the world, all the way back to to Margaret Island where there is a massive Open Air Aquapark. Budapest is famous for the many baths. It has around 80 geothermal springs, the world's largest thermal water cave system. This particualar Bath that we went to had heaps of baths at different temperatures and some massive waterslides.

Spending a couple of hours there, we headed back for our hostel to collect our bags. We hoped on the train and sadly said goodbye to beautiful Budapest!

"In the end, it’s not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many moments took your breath away.” - Shing Xiong

I hope this has inspired you.

LARISSAJODEE x

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