As I enjoyed reading and sharing my Australia travel diary so much, I’ve found the diary I kept in Budapest and want to share. Don’t worry, it’s nowhere near as long! I was only there for 3 days so I’ll just share it all in one post!
PS: before I start, I have already written about what I did here, here & here, as well as Budapest in photos here and a list of things to do in Budapest here
This post is literally the diary I kept whilst I was there.
19th February
I love Budapest! I’ve only been here half a day but it’s really cool. It’s a bit chilly though. The city’s really beautiful, wide streets, lovely buildings… I’m really glad we came.
It was an early start. I left at half 5. The traffic was fine til I hit Manchester. Anyways, I got on the flight fine. The benefit of travelling to Budapest by myself is I get sat with a group of guys. The guy next to me was Irish and he let me have the window seat. I liked him! He was really funny. We got chatting and we made friends. It was nice to talk to them and have a laugh. They were telling me about a bar that’s filled with shoes and a Michael Jackson statue!
We got a taxi to the hotel. Our hotel is beaut! Proper nice! Very posh for us! We had a wander. It’s about 5 minute walk to the Great Synagogue. We then walked to St Stephen’s basilica. It’s like a smaller Vatican. The area around there and near the river is really nice. Lots of nice looking restaurants and shops. We walked down the river and took a few photos. It looks really nice. Tomorrow we’re going to explore Buda.
We went back to the hotel and had a nap. Then we wandered back out. We found an Italian restaurant – Bella Pasta. It only cost about £12 for our whole bill. Turns out it’s voted number 49 out of over 1000 restaurants in Budapest.
20th February
We walked miles today! Saw loads of Budapest. It’s been a good day.
Breakfast in the hotel was good – selection of food was good, cereal, fruit, yoghurt, fry up, pastries etc.
We decided to see the old side of the city and Buda today, so we headed straight down to the Elisabeth Bridge and up to the Gellert Monument. It had awesome views of the river and bridges. We also had our first glimpse of the Parliament building. After, we wandered across to the royal palace. Some homeless guy tried to get us to buy a graffiti of our names on some paper! We politely declined.
We found the palace, wandered around the grounds, saw more amazing views, then headed across to Fishermans Bastion. This was the place that I’d wanted to visit since I first started researching Budapest. The views were epic!
For our cake stop, we went to Ruszurm Cukraszda which a traditional Hungarian cake shop/ cafe. It’s Lonely Planet recommended so was busy. There was even a tour group outside of it as we went in, being told that it’s an excellent place to get cakes! I decided to try some traditional food so had dobos torta which is a cake layered with chocolate & cream, then caramelised sugar on top. It was beautiful!
Afterwards, we walked down to the Hospital in the Rock but the next tour wasn’t for another 45 minutes. Instead we headed back up to the top. To get down the hill towards to Szechyni Bridge we used the funicular. I loved it! So cute! We walked over the famous bridge and went to see The Shoes on the Danube. This is a memorial to the Hungarian Jews who were shot and thrown into the Danube river during WW2. There’s actually loads of war memorials and memorabilia around Budapest, but the shoes are probably the most famous. I didn’t realise how much the city had been affected.
The Shoes on the Danube are more or less outside the parliament building (the biggest building in Hungary). It’s pretty impressive! I think the area around parliament has been massively cleaned up when you compare it to the Jewish area. It’s very nice, all wide, clean streets.
After our epic trek around some of the main sights of Buda Hill, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. We went to Lado Cafe. It was near our hotel and is a more traditional Hungarian restaurant. Our hotel gave us a voucher so we got a free drink each. I had steak and chips for about £7! Bargain!
21st February
My legs are seriously achy today!
Today we wandered across to Andrassy Ut. This is one of the busiest and prettiest streets in Budapest. Our first stop was House of Terror. This was the headquarters of the secret police during WW2 and was where lots of torture and executions happened. It was pretty dark. It’s really informative and they have detailed handouts for every room and display there. I’ll read them later. For me, the most interesting part was in the cellar where all the cells were. People were taken there and killed, then their bodies disposed of and nobody knew this was happening. Absolutely shocking stuff and so important that people are educated about these horrors.
After the harrowing hour spent in the museum, it was nice to be in daylight again. We walked up Andrassy Ut to Heroes Square and City Park. This id the Szechenyi Baths are the zoo. There’s also a theme park! Inside the park are some beautiful buildings and some really cool benches! There was also a market taking place which had some amazing food for sale. Lots of fish!
We were going to go to the zoo but it looked a bit depressing from the outside! We strolled back down Andrassy Ut and found a cafe to have cake! After that, we just had a walk around the city before heading back to our hotel to get ready for dinner.
We went to a pizza place just a bit further down the street from last nights restaurant. It was so busy! We were sat on a kind of mezzanine bit with one other table. It was so hot there and the waitresses seemed to have completely forgotten about us until a rather popular guy sat at the other table with a group of very attractive women!
As it was our last night, we headed down to the river to take photos of it at night with all the lights. Then we went back to the hotel, had a couple of cocktails and then went to bed.
I appear not to have written a diary for the final day when we went home but this is what happened…
I woke up with an awful pain in my right leg. I could barely walk on it! I took some painkillers and it eased off. We went to the fancy patisserie Gerbeaud and I had dobosz torta again. It was immense! I also saw the guys who I was sat with on the plane as we were walking around. On the walk back to the hotel, my leg started to hurt again and I was literally dragging it behind me. I must’ve looked a sight!
We got to the airport, had food, saw the lads I met on the flight out, turns out I was also sat with them on the flight back! The flight back was a lot quieter and uneventful then I had my drive back home.
Emily's adventures 