Day 10

We arrived in Budapest around half 8 in the morning feeling a little worse for wear considering it was earlier than we'd got up in our time away.

After checking into our hostel we went on a bit of a walk down Andrassy Ter. and visited the column of heroes which is a massive monument at the end of the street and then to the ominous sounding 'House of Terror'.

It was a monument to the Jews who were tortured in Hungary during the Holocaust. Along with this, it gave a potted history of how Hungary coped post-war including the history of Gulags and Communism in general as Hungary was under Soviet rule. While it was interesting, I didn't really feel as engaged as I did when we visited the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, partially due to the language barrier and the lack of English translations.

Later that evening we bought tickets to a boat party on the Danube which included a free bottle of 'champagne'. Said champagne tasted like warm piss put through a soda stream. Nonetheless it was fun and for two hours at least I got to pretend I was rich and famous.

Day 11

Our second day in Budapest was one where we walked around quite a lot and didn't really end up doing much other than drink beer.

We visited the big market hall next to the Danube but it was absolutely boiling and we couldn't face walking up the huge hill to the monument for Christianity in Hungary.

Instead we walked down a main shopping street and saw a lace that sold beer by the litre for around £3. As if they had to persuade me.

On our way back after that we found Budapest summer festival was on in a square near the Hard Rock Cafe with live music. The guy singing wasdoing covers of 90s hits so as you can imagine, Rach and I were loving it.

The hostel had organised a free bar crawl on the night which we went on and it was really good. They took us to 4 or 5 different ruin bars which were unlike anything I'd ever experienced at home. They all consisted of multiple rooms and a courtyard type effort in the middle where most people congregated with their drinks. It was also nice because the hostel we were staying at had a large proportion of English speakers so we could socialise pretty easily.

Day 12

We had to move hostels to one on the other side of the city today because Retox, our original hostel, was fully booked for the weekend.

We didn't anticipate how much of a ballache this would be and it didn't help that our new hostel was up 4 flights of stairs in what looked like a disused building without a working lift.

Moving ate up most of the day and by the time we'd showered and changed it was evening and so we decided to try and find somewhere to eat.

We found a small restaurant on Vaci Utca which offered a sharing plate, dessert and beer each for about a tenner. We duly accepted and the food was, a little ropy but you get what you pay for I guess.

Day 13

This was our last day in Budapest because we'd booked to fly out to Istanbul the next morning.

We decided to make the most of it and visit the Gellert Baths just across the river. The baths have about 8 or 9 different pools both indoor and outdoor all of varying temperatures ranging from freezing to really quite warm, along with a sauna, a steam room and an area for massage.

Going straight from a sauna or steam room to a pool full of freezing cold water is an experience. That said thought it was really good and we ended up staying there for around 5 hours before heading back to the hostel.

As Rach felt a bit under the weather and we had a flight the next day we decided to just go for a couple of drinks in the evening at a bar before getting a bit of an early night.