Well our time in Keszthley has come to an end. It has been a great experience. But it is time to move on.

Due to a booking error by the tour organisers, we ended up having to go to the above-named town for a single night. We had booked into the Novotel. Cheryl and I were also celebrating our 37th wedding anniversary so it was good to be able to relax in a nice atmosphere.

We caught the train at 10.38am, which was an hour after we turned up at the station. I don't know how the driver alert sprung into action so early, but these things do malfunction from time to time.

Our trip to Szekesfehervar was very pleasant and it seem to take no time. When the conductor rocked up to clip our tickets he started falling out of his tree in Hungarian. We had no idea why, but this lovely lady in the seat next door who spoke English came to our rescue. As it turned out, when they sell you an express ticket, they give the normal tickets, and then another receipt for the express part. Cheryl had only handed over the 4 tickets, but not the additional receipt. Anyway, the lady sorted it for us, and we were very grateful. We also had a good chat with her on the train, and she warned us about the taxi's, and made sure that we would always ask for a quote.

We arrived in Szekesfehervar on time and caught a taxi to the Novotel. The ride actually came in cheaper that the quote of 2000 HUF.

The rooms in the Hotel were absolute luxury compared to what we have been used to over the past 3 weeks.

We do not really know what the town of Szekesfehervar is renowned for, but it is the 9th largest city in Hungary, and is an important rail and road junction.

We were hanging out for some lunch, so we made our way down to the Centre of town where most of the restaurants are located.

Szekesfehervar has been around since 972 and has plenty of beautiful churches and buildings. At one stage is was occupied by the Turks for 145 years in around 1543. As I have mentioned in my previous blogs, you go to bed in one country, and you wake up in another.

Our lunch was great, so we spent all afternoon checking the place out. Finally, we went back to the hotel room to get cleaned and showered, to go out for a night meal.

After some time, we got back to the town Centre again and booked into this nice Italian restaurant. The meals were excellent. But it was time to go home to bed and enjoy the comforts of the Hotel. For Cheryl and I it was our wedding anniversary, so we needed an early night…………..for a good sleep!

Budapest.

I think we all had the best sleep we have had in ages. The Hotel rooms were great. But we had to keep moving, as we needed to get to Budapest by around lunch time, so Brian and I could go to the Grand Prix track to collect our tickets and do the pit lane walk.

After a great breakfast, we caught the train to Budapest. We got off at the Regional Station and caught a taxi to our apartment which was located in a very central location by Parliament, and the Academia. On arriving we were able to leave our baggage in the apartment while it was being cleaned. The girls decided to locate a Hop on Hop off bus for the afternoon, and Brian and I went looking for the Metro No2 line to take us to a Regional Station where we would catch a train out to Mayrgold, where according to F1 we would have a brisk 45 minute walk to the track.

We did work it all out and catch the right train, which was a very old "Rattler" that stopped at all 20 stations and took around an hour to get to our destination. It was 4.50pm by then and the ticket office closed at 5.30pm and the pit lane walk's last session was at 5.30pm. There was no signage at the station, you would not even know the F1 was on. It was only by accident we saw the Hungorring road sign. We started "Briskly" walking, and when we eventually got to the 6km to Hungorring sign we knew we it was going to be tight. We walked and walked and bloodywell walked, through all this beautiful countryside and township. Finally, we arrived at the track at 5.50pm. Luckily for us, the ticket office was still open, so we were right for the next day. We missed out on the pit lane walk. ☹ However, on the following Sunday we met a couple who said they turned up for the walk with 8000 other people, and it was so badly organised, they would never do it again.

Brian and I were stuffed, it was a long walk up hill and own dale. We couldn't face the walk back, and we did not know if the old rattler was going to be running at that time of the night. We caught a taxi back to the Metro (8000 HUF, about $40 Australian). It was about 7.30pm when we got back to the apartment, by which time the girls had moved in and sorted things out. We went around the corner to a small restaurant for tea, and had an early night, as we had a big day tomorrow at the Grand Prix, and the girls had more routes to do on the Hop on Hop off bus.

We did, however, have time to take in some of the beautiful buildings Budapest is renowned for. Like all the buildings we have seen so far in Europe you can do nothing but sit back at look at their architecture and wonder how they built them, and how long it took them to do it. There is nothing like this in Australia.