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Day 10: Budapest!!!

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Queue George Exra please.... ;) we've come ...."miles to Budapest, our hidden treasure chest!" 
First of all, I will never stop being surprised by how magnificently beautiful and colourful these old European cities are! Budapest is no different! As always we did another free align tour first thing this morning and here are some things we learnt about the colourful history of this beautiful city.
 
After the world wars and the communist reigne here in Hungary and the consequent economic crisis that these brought to the country many of the building a are privately owned. But because of this many people can therefore not afford the upkeep or the renovations of these old houses. Combine this with the post war/post soviet re-building of the city and you get a mix (similar to that in Berlin and a wee bit of Prague thrown in) of Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and more traditional architecture , with some brutalist soviet buildings thrown into the mix.  
Because of that, I feel that most of my images are of buildings, which is unusual for me! 

The walking tour took about two and and half hours and took us over from the Pest (pronounced Pesht) side of the river, which is a lot more fast pace with pleanty places to eat drink, shops, theatres, cinemas and opera houses...the heart of the cities nightlife. You cross the Duna river over the Chain Bridge to the much slower pace Buda. The leafy hills, the Castle, the Fishermans Bastion, combined with some stunning views summarises the general vibe in Buda. Our tour guide Ursula, a native to Budapest, was very passionate about her city and overloaded us with information about its history form the Middle Ages!

After our tour was over Claire and I meandered around the old town of Buda and made our way back towards The Chain Bridge...we stopped and had a lovely iced coffee at a small cafe off the main streets. We headed back to the hostel with the intention of taking a nap...but ended up just freshening up and heading back out to make the most of our time here! Since we have two full days here, makes a nice welcome change, we are quite relaxed in our sightseeing :) 

Tonight as we headed for a place to eat in tow town centre we spotted a few quirky joints to eat and drink at... Karavan looked like a nice local street food style , another restaurant we liked the look of was Konyha , full of sofas and quirky lighting. There are also several cool 'Ruin' bars around the old Jewish quarter that are totally worth checking out! Our favourite was Szimpla. It was really cool to see how these young artists and business owners had turned such a derelict emote waste of empty space info something really cool, creative and hip!! Unfortunately they didn't serve food so we moved on but we'll defo be back for a drink tomorrow in the daytime to see it properly!! In the end we decided to go to one that the hostel recommended called Hummus Bar, omg YUM! We ate so much!

We walked a bit along the river towards a metro station as we headed home, and yes, Budapest is equally as beautiful by night :)
Goodnight for now 
Xx F 

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