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Budapest: take two!

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Seeing as we had two days in this amazing city we decided to strategically plan day two so that it was relaxed and full of interesting things. So we woke up slow and headed to the train station to try and reserve seats for our horribly early train tomorrow, turned out that was a waste of time but hey ho, boring stuff so I'll move on. 

Turkish baths:
We had heard from various people that we must try the baths in Budapest as it lies upon several natural hot springs. Our tour guide from yesterday recommended a couple of budget places we could go, so we ended up at this nice little Turkish style bath and it felt like we were the only tourists there. There was a labarynth of pools indoors and outside, each of varying temperatures. After wimping out at the freezing outdoor pool, we unknowingly went for the hottest indoor pool at 40 degrees. It was like stepping into a smelly hot bath. A nice smelly hot bath that tingled a little bit. There was definitely some funky science stuff going on in the water as we watched Fiona's silver rings turn black and blue. We gave each pool a go and went into the steam room for a bit, hoping this might help my chesty cough. After spending a good two and a half hours we left feeling completely relaxed (and probably still smelling a little bit like egg).



Margaret island:
Seeing our our spa wasn't far from here, we walked over Margaret bridge to see this wee island in the middle of the river. We chose the right time to arrive as I had just enough time to grab an ice cream and sit down for the fountain show. Every hour on the hour the fountain does a little dance along to music. Most of these songs were Hungarian so we didn't know them, although we did hear a Hungarian version of  'let it go' from frozen. It was pretty impressive, and apparently at night time it even lights up different colours. THe place also holds a lot of history with this city but I'll just add a link so if you want to read more CLICK HERE. 

After all of this fun and excitement, we were really in the mood for cake so we stopped by this place that had a fancy selection and went for it. 

 

Sunset at the citadel:
Fuelled by the cake we did a mini hike up to the top of the hill where the citadel and Statue of Liberty were waiting for us. We timed it so that we would get to see the sun set from the greatest view point of Budapest you could ask for. There weren't many clouds in the sky so everything was hazy pink for a while, dipped in this beautiful light. As the sunlight faded the lights of the city came on which was a sight to be seen too.

Dinner at Konyha:
We had spotted this place on our wander the previous night so we made the effort to find it again so we could have dinner there. It was a bit busier today but the lady who served us was so nice and made sure we got a seat outside (I mean, it's not often we get to sit outside in Scotland). There was a cute doggy who seemed to belong to the place, I got to pet him on the head, I'm sorry there isn't a picture! The food we ordered was delicious, I had a mackerel risotto and Fiona had the chicken risotto, soooooo good! A great meal for our last night in Budapest, so good we had to follow it up with desert too 😋 (to use up the rest of our Florens of course! 😉) 

Claire

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