The rest of Budapest! (Hope you pronounced it resht so that it rhymed!)

After my very enthusiastic quick first post from just after I arrived, I decided to give you a few days off and amalgamate the rest of Budapest into one post (which in hindsight now I've seen the length of it may not have been one my better ideas... Apologies, you don't have to read it all, I won't hold it against you. I have really enjoyed my time here; it's such a lovely city and definitely one I'd return to, which as many of you know, is not something I often do. 

Firstly, the weather. It dramatically improved after the first day! Friday and Satuday we had 27 degrees and today (Sunday) we had 29 degrees and sun, sun, sun!

Secondly, I thought I'd tell you a little about where I'm staying. The hostel I'm in is called the Home Made Hostel and I chose it as it specifically said it wasn't a party hostel. It's situated in a beautiful building...

...overlooking a central courtyard 

(which admittedly isn't so pretty!) but the hostel itself is lovely. I'm in a shared dorm of 6, all single beds (not bunks), and the nice thing is that it's 3 beds downstairs and then we have a mezzanine level with the other three beds so it feels like I'm only sharing with 2 others. These people have changed throughout the days and I've met 4 different people as a result, although for three of them there's no common language so conversation has been pretty much nonexistent! Other than that, our room shares two bathrooms which are clean and have showers with truly impressive water pressure, a communal space and kitchen. Home Made Hostel is the perfect name for it and it feels really welcoming here. 

So what have I been up to for the rest of time here, I hear you ask! Well, I have walked MILES! Budapest is eminently walkable as I have very ably proved! On Friday morning I went to the Parliament building, which, just like all the other major buildings here is yet another impressive sight as you'll see from the pictures below. 

I carry my binoculars with me which often seems likely unnecessary weight but to be able to see this building's architectural features in detail more than made up for it! From there I headed to St Margrit Island where they had dancing fountains! It's true! They played music and the fountains danced to it! I managed to catch the 1pm classical performance and was entertained by fountains strutting their stuff to Swan Lake and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik amongst others. 

After mooching round the island for a couple of hours, the next stop on my tour of Budapest was Szechenyi Baths (thank you for that tip Stuart!). Being an older traveller, my back has been struggling a little with carrying a rucksack and so I decided a trip to the baths would help, obviously for health reasons rather than indulgence you understand. They were amazing. Housed in a very yellow building, there were pools at a whole range of temperatures to go in. Only problem is, once you've been in a pool that's like bath water, anything less than 30 degrees feels like ice!!! I don't have any photos to show you within the baths unfortunately as the downside to being a solo traveller is that you don't have anyone to keep an eye on your stuff...

Budapest wine festival is on at the moment, so it felt rude not to take advantage of this opportunity and yesterday I spent a happy seven hours tasting wine and listening to jazz which was just brilliant. 

It was based at the castle and whilst my ticket to the wine festival gave me entry to the castle, for some reason I didn't feel like going round any of the exhibits. I think it was just too nice a day and I had to be outside (well that's where the wine was after all!). I tried the following wines and made extensive notes on each which I'll share below:

Borbely Csaladi Pinceszet: Pinot Noir Rose - bit sharp

Gal Szolobirtok Es Pinceszet: dry rose - so so

Garamvari Szolobirtok: Evolution sparkling rose * (the middle bottle below)

Juhasz Testverek Pinceszete: Sauvignon Blanc - too fruity

St Andrea Szolobirtok: Pinot noir - yum

Hungaria Pezgo: Extra dry sparkling rose - amazing!

So I'm hoping you noticed there is a wine producer named after me, well OK my Saint (whose name day is July 9th for those who are interested, coincidentally the day I should have been born)...

...and I'd like to say this was the best wine I tasted but it was actually the Hungaria, extra dry sparkling rose which was amazing, hence the tasting note saying that! To eat I had a Toscni, which is basically a heart attack on a plate. 

I'm sure they're not really meant to be, it's just like a potato rosti held together with batter and I had mine with sour cream on, but it was fried in a considerable amount of oil, so whilst not the healthiest, it was delicious all the same!

Coming 'home' I walked over the chain bridge but the view wasn't a patch on that from Waterloo bridge (although I do appreciate I'm a little biased as that's my favourite bridge view!). 

It's the lack of skyscrapers (my in-depth architectural analysis). They're not allowed to build higher than 96 metres (height of the parliament and St Stephen's Basilica), I'll leave you to find out why 96 is an important number for Hungary. It's also opening of the Budapest State Opera today and so as I passed the Opera House, they had a display on that was similar to the Lumiere show in London which I stopped to watch for a while too!! (My not great picture - as my camera battery then died - below)

On my last day in Budapest I woke up feeling absolutely shattered (just tired, not hungover!) which isn't so surprising given how many miles I'd walked over the previous few days and so I decided to go to the botanical gardens and have a relaxing day there not doing much. However, it turns out that they are connected to the zoo and there was a massive queue to get in and I didn't really feel like seeing caged animals so I went for a meander in the city park instead. Today was the Budapest marathon and my god Hungarians are fit! The number of people I saw with medals who were then cycling home/wherever they were going to next was lunacy!

The agricultural museum is in the city park and the Thai embassy was putting on a festival so I wandered round that, then sat and read my book for a bit and then decided to see pretty much all the bits of Budapest I'd not yet seen (well at least that's what my feet and hips think is what I did and they're not far off!). A few pictures from today's meander below...

Grand Synagogue, followed by random photos from places I can't name... 

Tomorrow I head to Tata. This is going to be for a day of relaxation, or at the very least, a day of doing a lot less walking than I've done the past few days!!