Budapest - Day 2

Budapest is still so so amazing and so sunny! It was a lot colder today but still ok :) I'd forgotten how loud cities are until I tried to go to sleep - I feel so lucky living in the countryside.

The hotel I'm staying in has the biggest choice for breakfast I've ever seen! I ate so much - waffles, a fry up, peach juice and a pear, they were all so yummy! Their bacon is absolutely delicious and crispy, just the way I like it. They have some really unique things on the buffet, such as horseradish (I can't even imagine eating that for breakfast!), olives and that chilli/tomato stuff I talked about in my last blog. Apparently it translates as hot creamy paprika, which I guess describes it pretty well.

After breakfast dad and I caught one of those tour buses just down from the royal palace. The palace is such a beautiful building and absolutely massive - I'm hoping to go there tomorrow morning. It's on the top of this big hill. I got it wrong yesterday, Budapest is actually super hilly, well half of it is (the Buda side). Half of the city is on one side of the River Danube and the other half on the other side. We took the tour bus most of the way around the city and got off for a coffee in this square near all these grand buildings, one of which was the British Embassy. We then got back on the bus and went around a different route seeing even more of the city. The buses have these paintings on the side of the windows of cartoon figures so when you see the bus from outside, the passenger's heads are drawn onto cartoon figures, some of which are quite comical :) We got off the bus along this street which contained the opera house and shops such as Gucci. My dad really wanted to see this model railway. It was seriously good! They made the whole of Budapest, Vienna and some German cities miniature; the detail was insane! It covered over 3 rooms in total and was brilliant - if you ever go to this amazing city, I would definitely recommend it.

We skipped lunch which made me pretty sad :( buuuuut I did have a Nutella pancake so I guess that kind of counts as lunch?

We walked back toward the river after this and got on this boat down the river. It was great although absolutely freezing - I can't even explain how cold it was! Dad and I decided to sit at the front outside so he could take loads of photos. The city is beautiful as the sun is setting and at night. The sky goes these lovely light blues, pinks and purples and it's just so so gorgeous! They light up all the buildings - it just looks so pretty :) If you want to see what it looks like have a look here.

We had dinner at this little Hungarian/Italian restaurant and again, like every meal I've had here, it was delicious. I had mozzarella, tomatoes, basil and ciabatta and then schnitzel with spinach, garlic and potato wedges (over here they're called steak chips). The portions were huuuuge! My main had two schnitzels and about 20-30 wedges; I was absolutely stuffed once I'd finished.

Apparently Putin, the President of Russia is coming to Budapest tomorrow so they're expecting the whole city to almost shut down for security reasons, which could be kind of fun to see.

I fly home tomorrow so before I go I'm hoping to see the House of Terror, which is meant to be really good but really thought provoking. I also want to climb up to the royal palace. Fingers crossed I'll get them both done!

Sorry there are no pictures in this blog. I'm writing it on my iPad and for some reason they didn't come out on my last one. I'll add some photos once I get home because I really wanna show you guys how extraordinary this city is :) I'll also correct those pesky spelling mistakes and formatting errors because I can't actually see what I've written on here - iPad's aren't great for blogging!

Lizzie

 xxx