21 Nov

 Fantastic day. Budapest is beautiful!

Walked through some lovely streets and alleyways (random little corridor of bars) down towards the underground railway museum. grumpy woman told me cash only so i went out to a bank, got cash out, came back, she then rolled her eyes at my 10000 HUF note. Finally got in... it was a bit disappointing tbh, but some interesting artifacts, including some other the old train cars.

Caught the tram towards the castle but got off at the Nagy Vasarcsarnok (a massive 19th century, indoor marketplace), cause it was so beautiful. Fresh produce, spices, leather goods, embroidered things, lace... some local but also lots of touristy/souvenir things. So much paprika.

Walked over the beautiful iron Szabadsag bridge. Admired the beautiful, crumbling beauty of Gellert place/hotel. Got some lunch at a cafe.. bit of a rip-off. Stew thing was average. Home-made felafels were nice. House-made iced tea very good.

Caught the tram to the Buda Castle and went up the funicular. Wandered around a bit, amazing views, then went into the castle museum which had displays of medieval and gothic parts of the castle, and bits that had been dug up. Amazing mix of history from roman, to medieval through to ottoman empire, 20th century, communism, wars, unification...

St Stephen's Hall was incredibly beautiful and highly decorative.

Went back down the funicular and went back to Gellert to do the thermal bath thing. It was pretty amazing. Beautiful tiled pools and different temperature thermal baths. Shame I had to buy flip-flops and a towel...

Caught another tram up towards the fisherman's Bastion and walked up the hill. It was so pretty up there. Spectacular views of the river and the city with all the lights. The bastion had lovely walls, turrets and arches - great for framing views. The church right next to it was also spectacular with one of those colourful tiled roofs. There seemed to be a film crew there and some filming going on but not sure what it was.

Walked back down to the tram along the river and back over the same bridge. Back to the apartment via a cafe where I got an excellent pizza.

19,358 steps

13.01 km


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