Thursday 27th June
We left Athens on our Wizz air flight (yes I was also dubious about an airline with such a name) and arrived (safely) in Budapest just after 5pm. Like with other budget airlines we've flown, *cough* Ryanair *cough*, we were seated separately because they charge for that even on the same booking, and this time we weren't so lucky with being able to swap seats! We realised that this flight is the longest amount of time we've spent apart in 6 months!
Flying into Budapest was so pretty, I didn't expect to see a patchwork of agricultural fields, it was beautiful! This was also the first flight that we'd done Schengen to Schengen and so was the first time we didn't have to pass through immigration and customs upon arrival, what a treat!
We caught the airport bus into the city and then walked from there to our accommodation. It was so pretty driving through the streets, everything is just so grand! And then walking down them, wow, I was blown away! The streets are amazing, they are so wide, and everything about it here is grand, the buildings, the trees, all large in size and the buildings are all beautifully old with gorgeous architecture and carvings on them. I already love it here!
We didn't really realise, but Budapest is a bigggg place, the walk from the closest bus stop to our place was about half an hour, but it felt like so much longer when we'd already been standing on a bus for 40mins with heavy packs. We arrived at our Airbnb, an old building, that like in France, was a facade at the front and once we walking through the big doors, it opened up into a courtyard with apartments all surrounding it. We climbed the flights of stairs and came to our apartment, very excited by it all!
This is when the great accommodation debacle of Hungary began. It was a self check in place and when we entered the apartment, right in the doorway as we walked in was a big pile of dirty laundry of sheets and towels etc. Ok, that's strange, they must have forgotten to take it with them. We continued in and dumped our bags. Cool place, split level apartment with the bed on the mezzanine level. I head up the stairs and realise that there is no bedding on the bed, and there is a doona just strewn on the ground next to the bed. Are the hosts ready for us? I check the cupboards and there is no spare bedding in any of them. In the kitchen there's no bin liner and the dishes are all still sitting in the rack, and theres a distinct smell of gas in the kitchen. This is very strange, the reviews for the place were all great. We message the host on Airbnb and half an hour later we haven't heard anything from them. So we text them on the number that they have provided and decide to go out and get dinner while we wait for a reply.
We arrived back with dinner an hour later and still had no response. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, and at how strange the situation seemed, as if they just haven't finished cleaning the place, we wondered if something happened to them. We tried calling them and they didn't pick up. What are we going to sleep on tonight? It's too late to start trekking around the city in the dark trying to find somewhere else to stay. We contact Airbnb and they transfer us to someone else in the company but then we don't hear anything back from them, we're just told they'll get in touch. Right it looks like we've got to make this work for tonight. There's a small mattress protector thing that covers a small square of the bed (better than nothing) that we lay down and two clean pillow cases (score!). Luckily we have our own towels with us, so we sacrifice one of our towels as a sheet to share and save the other one for the shower in the morning. There is currently a heatwave across Europe at the moment so it is insanely hot and stuffy, so luckily needing blankets is not an issue. In fact we have the opposite issue, and find a small fan that we put at the end of the bed to try and move a bit of air around. So here we are our first night in Budapest sleeping with nothing but a towel, it was quite funny once we were tired enough!
Friday 28th June
We woke up and spent a little bit of time talking to Airbnb trying to sort the issue out. Long story short they're trying to contact the host to help sort it out.
(Not knowing if we would be getting clean sheets or not we went to but the dirty laundry in the washing machine. When we opened the washing machine do you know what we found in there? Prepare yourself. Crusted mens underwear *throwing up emoji* it was disgusting! That was the final straw. We took photos of everything and sent it through to Airbnb and got the case escalated. We sorted out the washing machine and put the sheets in so we'd hopefully have something to sleep on tonight.
As we're out exploring we finally get a message from the host just simply asking if we've got sheets yet. No apology, no nothing. She replied that she would have someone send some over. We informed her we were out so if they could just leave it inside that would be great and asked if the place had been cleaned. A couple of hours later we got a message from her saying they couldn't enter the apartment because we weren't there (which we had told her we wouldn't be) so they left the sheets outside the apartment. She also conveniently didn't reply to our questions about whether the place had been cleaned.)
We put the issue to the side and headed out to enjoy the day in Budapest!
We had a huge day walking a total of 8 hours and 16km around the city. We made our way up along the Pest side of the river and then back down the Buda side.
I love Budapest! It's so beautiful and old and everything is grand, but it's also so lively and feels like a happening place. There's real spirit and soul here!
We started out at parliament building and walked our way along the Danube river on the Pest side. It is so beautiful, all the amazing buildings along the wide river and the feel to the place is just so full of life!
We wandered around the incredible Hungarian parliament building right on the banks of the Danube. The gothic and renaissance revival architecture was amazing!
We also saw the Shoes on the Danube Bank, a memorial to the Jewish that were killed there during WWII. They were instructed to take their shoes off and then they were shot, their bodies falling into the river and being carried away. It was very sad and sobering.
As we continued along the river there was The Széchenyi Chain Bridge that connects the Buda and Pest, the western and eastern sides of Budapest. Further round from here, past the Citadel on the forest hill was the Great market hall, a really cool neo-gothic building where fresh fruit, veg and meat is sold, as well as little lunch stalls, which is why we were there!
After lunch we crossed the bridge and made our way back down along the Pest side of the river. Everything is amazing!
We climbed up the steep hill and came upon Buda Castle! It was so cool! It felt like being in Taylor Swifts music video "Love Story". The whole area up here is Buda Castle Hill and is gorgeous! It is home to Buda Castle, an amazing church and the Fishermans Bastion, a beautiful terrace area. It is all so huge that there is even a small village up here! While we were walking around the incredible grounds, we saw police on horse back with swords! Swords! How cool is that?!
We spent hours wandering around up here taking it all in and exploring every nook and cranny we could! We also stopped at the castle and had an ice lolly as it was so incredibly hot, I felt like I was melting!
From this high up as well we had amazing views over the river and Buda, including the incredible Parliament building!
Gah it is amazing here! I think one of my favourite parts is the brightly coloured tiled roofs! It's so unique and lively!
After we were happy we'd explored everything there is to explore, and tried to cool down as much as we could in some shade, we headed back down the hill and continued walking along the river. And you just know I had to play George Ezra's "Budapest"!
We continued strolling across town and back to our apartment. What an incredible day! We were both happily exhausted after the big day and spent the evening in front of the fan with a cold bottle of ice tea!
Apparently the sun was even stronger than I'd realised, because guess who had gotten sunburnt just from walking around, that's right, it was meeeee. We tried to walk in the shade as much as possible and Sam wasn't even the slightest bit pink! Thanks for getting me to pack the burn gel dad!
(We arrived home from a fantastic day out and found that there were indeed clean sheets and towels outside. Great! We excitedly bring them up to the bed, put the bottom sheet on (which is really a top sheet because no one in Europe seems to know what a fitted sheet is!) and then find two small doona covers? One, there is one large doona in here, so this would obviously be useless for that, and two, not knowing whether we would get clean sheets or not when we were sorting out the washing this morning we noticed that there was a full size doona cover in amongst the washing, so they just haven't given us the proper stuff. But honestly I don't care, I'm just happy we had something clean to sleep on!
To cut a very long story which dragged on well past our time in Budapest, short. We continued being referred up the ladder with Airbnb and a couple of days in got a message from another number, the host, apologising and asking if everything was now sorted. So we don't know who we were talking to before. Anyway, in the end we made do, and Airbnb refunded us the cleaning fee and first night of accommodation.)
Saturday 29th June
Today was such an incredibly hot day and we were knackered from such a big day yesterday, that we spent the day chilling out, trying to stay cool in front of the fan!
We nipped out later in the evening to get some dinner and the city still blows me away, I love it! The big train station is beautiful, and there are these gorgeous little book stands all over the city!
Sunday 30th June
When we were back in Dubrovnik having our haircuts and were talking to the hairdresser about our travels, she recommend going to the Széchenyi Thermal Baths if we were in Hungary. We did a bit of searching and realised that they weren't far from us, so that's where we are going today!
We spent the day in the baths and it was fantastic! We weren't sure whether it would still be any good given that the outside air temperature is already so hot, but it was great! The building and the baths were so cool! It really felt like being in Turkish baths or something like that. There was a huge outdoor section with cooler water, well if you call 27degrees cool (!) and whirl pool (which of course we did)! The outdoor area was actually much like the baths in Switzerland. Then there was a really hot pool which we didn't realise until we got in and started feeling pretty faint as it was 42degrees! We got out as quickly as we could manage!
Then indoors there were a series of baths and saunas, which I think we went in almost every temperature bath! And of course we did the whole sauna and then ice water thing again as we'd learnt in Switzerland! It was great fun!
After enjoying soaking in the baths we headed down the road to the park for a late lunch. We found a food stall that sold traditional Langos, and they looked amazinggggg, so we went for one of those and a hot dog!
Langos is delicious!!!!! It's basically a deep fried flatbread dough, topped with sour cream, cheese, and garlic. Yummmm!
It was so lovely just chilling out in the park!
After lunch we went for a wander round and stumbled across a castle which was really cool! We so weren't expecting something like this here!
Our meanderings also had us stumble across Hero's Square which was pretty cool.
We continued to walk down the amazing streets to our apartment and chilled out for the evening, before heading out later on to get some food and have one more walk around the beautiful station!
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