Budapest Day 2 - Morning Walk to the Danube and Buda

Another early start for me, but 6 a.m. felt reasonable compared with last week. I did some reading until Sarah woke up, and then after breakfast, we set off on our morning walk.

Our first stop was St. Stephen’s Basilica—an absolutely massive and beautiful church that was built between 1851 and 1906. At its highest point, it's 96 metres tall!

From there, it was only a short walk to the Danube near the Chain Bridge. Some interesting information about the bridge is shown below.

We walked across the bridge to the Buda side of Budapest. There were great views from the bridge of Buda Castle and the other prominent buildings lining the river on both sides. We could also see the funicular railway heading up the hill beside the castle. The castle will wait for us to explore another day.

We retraced our steps back across the bridge and then walked along the river. It didn’t take long to reach the bronze shoes on the Danube—a moving memorial to the people killed by the fascist party during World War II.

We continued further along the river to the very large and stunning Hungarian Parliament Buildings. Below ground here, we found a small free video display and information boards about the 1956 revolution against the Soviet-backed government and the failure of the uprising.

We took a short detour to find a geocache hidden near the Parliament buildings. After successfully finding it, we made our way back toward our apartment without using the map. We passed lots of other very interesting buildings—many of which are starting to look the same! Eventually, we had to give in and consult the map, as we hadn’t come across the main road near our apartment. As it turned out, we were only 160 metres away—so we’d done pretty well with the navigation. Now having proof read this Sarah says there was no "we" in the navigation, it was all "Aaron" as she was completely lost. 😂

Ham and cheese toasted sandwiches again for lunch today! After lunch we did some laundry and then spent the afternoon reading and chilling. We also popped down to the Spar market and got a few essential supplies fruit, biscuits, milk, and bread. Some Clarkson's Farm TV viewing helped fill the afternoon.

For dinner we walked about 1km to the Jewish quarter to check out a street food market which turned out to be over priced touristy food. We also checked out a restaurant while there that was supposed to have great goulash. But the thought of spending $65 on one meal was not for us. Maybe on our last night in the City we will splash out? Let's see how the rest of the week goes. I can hear some of you saying "what tight arsed b4$tards!" and you would be right. 😂 We are currently unemployed and have to watch our pennies and our forints! 

Instead we walked back to our local area to enjoy a beer at a pub. I had a 500ml Hoffbrau German wheat beer and Sarah had a 300ml Hungarian Dreher beer. Total cost $10.50! Then we went to a pizza place we found on Google maps that was within 40m of our front door and ordered 4 large pieces of pizza which turned out to be delicious. We ate back at the apartment. The pizzas cost $15! A double bargain for the Flashpackers! With our savings we went out after the pizza and purchased some ice creams from the Spar.😂