budapest, hungary

6-9 October 2006
I loved Budapest. It was a hidden gem. The first East European city I've visited and it has a tangibly different feel than the west.
A little bit dirtier, less sparkly and a bit dated, like it's playing catching up - but so full of character.

I took a long weekend to met up with Beth my friend from home whose doing a 4 month back-packing adventure. We stayed in this very friendly hostel, with the most helpful staff.

They are locals and pointed out all the underground places (sometimes only denoted by a sticker on the door) to go out at night, that you'd never find in a travel guide and even cooked us pancakes for dessert on the first night.

The ornate building in the picture above is the very ornate Parliament building on the bank of the Danuabe River. Basically the east side, old-part of the city is Buda and Pest is on the west and below is what's known as the chain bridge (pictured below with the moon so low it's sitting inbetween the buildings on the far side), one of the many bridges that links the 2 sides.

Known as the jacuzzi capital of Europe, with many thermal spas we couldn't pass an afternoon in a better way. We sampled the indoor baths that looked very Roman with the collonades, the sauna (remember Eastern Europe haven't embraced the boardshort look yet; the speedo is king) and wallowing in the outdoor pool whatching the afternoon sun slide away in water that's body temperature warm (37-38 degrees). Lovely! It's such a local past time you get a refund on your admission price if you leave within 4 hours of arriving.

Apart from doing other customary things like eating goulash, we got our hair cut as a Beth's hairdresser back in Oz was from Budapest and said there were many very qualified, but poorly paid hairdressers - hence is more to Sydney. It was certainly cheaper than London!

Speaking of money, I've very proud of my budgeting having only 74 florints (AUD $0.50) left at the end of my trip. It's the non-Euro challenge of how much money to pull out of the ATM, trying to the balance between not having wads left over and not having to incur bank fees for multiple transactions.

Although, having said that if I did have a few thousand florints left over... it wouldn't have been a problem as I could easily be tempted to return.