Budapest, Hungary || Backpacking Europe!

hi lovelies

I’m back again with the 6th instalment of my ‘Backpacking Europe!’ series. Today I am documenting my time visiting Budapest!

See my previous posts in this series here:

Backpacking Split, Croatia 

Backpacking Zagreb, Croatia

Backpacking Ljublijana, Slovenia

Backpacking Lake Bled, Slovenia

Backpacking Vienna, Austria

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Budapest I think was our most full-on location of the trip! We were lucky enough to have 2 days in this beautiful city allowing us to see pretty much the entire city by both trams and on foot.

When we arrived in Budapest we had to navigate our way to our hostel with bus replacements as their metro was under maintenance. We got our bus tickets from the station and made our way up to street level to assess the situation. We got out trusty Google maps and made our way to the bus station. We waited for a bus which was coming as regularly as every two minutes like the metro usually does. We got on and validated our tickets to find we were travelling in the wrong direction (spoiler: This wasn’t the only time this happened on this trip). We quickly hopped off at the next bus stop and crossed the road to the bus stop on the other side of the road. We expected these busses to be busy as rail replacements like they are back here in London but we were pleasantly surprised how smoothly the transport system ran.

We hopped off the bus at the stop nearest to our Hostel and began our walk. We agreed that the first supermarket we see we will stop and pick up a few bits for lunch. We walked around the corner and were shocked to see a Tescos. Tescos in Hungary? We didn’t expect it at all. I attempted to use my Clubcard but instead got some very confused looks.

For some strange reason, we both decided we really wanted beans on toast for lunch. I don’t know whether we were craving some home comforts or being in Tesco made us crave food easily accessible at home but we decided this would be the perfect lunch for today. We picked up a tin of baked beans and some gluten-free bread then continued our short walk to the hostel.

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Check out the Hostel we stayed in here!

 

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We checked into the hostel and made our lunch ready to set out for the remainder of the afternoon and evening to do some sightseeing.

We walked across most of the city seeing a lot of the main sights that we wanted to see. It was very hot when we first set you walking our way up to Liberty Statue though this was really worthwhile as the view from the top was stunning. It was also a really nice and shaded walk up with plenty of benches to sit on and grassy areas to take a break.

We spent a while at the top admiring the view and the Liberty Statue. We then took an unconventional route back down to the city resulting in us going off-road and down some very dodgy steep forest.

Once back down on the ground we continued to walk across the city stopping off and getting pictures with some of the main sights before making our way to Mcdonalds for dinner. We don’t often treat ourselves to fast food when away not only is it unhealthy and doesn’t allow us to emerge ourselves in culture but this particular Mcdonalds is deemed the most beautiful. It is built into a building which is over 100 years old. The interior is outstanding perfect for an Instagram or two and a bonus is that they served Gluten Free burgers! This marks the first time I got to try a Gluten-Free Mcdonalds since my diagnosis.

After dinner, we started to head back towards our Hostel ready for a full day of sightseeing in Budapest the following day!

Our second day began with us eating a breakfast bar and preparing our lunch for the day (which turned out to be a disaster). We agreed that this morning would be spent at the food market which fortunately was on the doorstep of our Hostel! This is a great place to pick us fresh produce as well as many Hungarian treats for very reasonable prices.

At this point in the trip, my body was starting to crave the nutrients that it was lacking. There was nothing I wanted more than to eat fruit. I couldn’t have been in a better place to pick this up! I got fresh nectarine and also some dried fruit which we continued to snack on the following days. We sat outside the hall and ate our fruit putting together a plan for the day. It mostly consisted of walking and seeing the other side of the city. We also wanted to ride on the tram system! Something about public transport in other countries not only terrifies me but also fascinates me.

We made our way accross the city catching as many sights as we could.

There’s so much to do in Budapest and our visit was full on! We definitely could’ve done with another day in the city however have proved it is possible to see this amazing city within two days!

The plan for the evening was to make our way over to the Baths for a relaxing evening. I want to do a whole blog post on this experience as I feel like it deserves a post of its own! Expect to see that soon here on my blog.

Have you visited Budapest? If you have what was your favourite part? If you haven’t where is top of your list to visit next? I’m always looking for travel inspiration!

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