Budapest

Budapest is a really beautiful city and is especially well lit at night time. All the famous buildings are beautifully lit from all angles so they are even more spectacular than they are during the day. The first thing we did the first night in Budapest (after pizza for dinner that is) was to book ourselves on a night cruise on the river Danube. This was probably the highlight of our time in Hungary, as all of the best buildings are visible along the Danube and make a fantastic scene.





The next day in Budapest we crossed over the river to Buda (we were staying in Pest) and climbed up to the old castle. We visited the Church of Our Lady which was a beautiful church. It is built in a really interesting style with coloured tiles and bricks. Unfortunately the big spire was covered up with scaffolding so we couldn't see it at its best. We also walked along to the palce and the old castle walls but it was really really hot and not at all a good temperature for touristing it up. We quickly made our way to the famous Gellert Thermal Spa where we proceeded to relax the day away in the nice cool wave pool interspersed with soaks in the thermal pool.



Next day, on the way out of Budapest we strolled up to Hosok Ter (Heroes square) and the Budapest City Park. We saw a big statue of our friend Arpad (from the National Historic Park and Fetzy Panorama) who we keep seeing lots of statues of. We also saw a huge statue of the dude Anonymous (who wrote the early history of Hungary).



While Hungary and Budapest were awesome, we're finding that we're running out of steam (and cash) and are about ready to start making a break for home (home UK that is, not home NZ, sorry guys). So we're going to give Vienna and Prague a miss at the moment and start heading west. Right now we're in Melk (we randomly chose Melk as our destination this evening) which has a massive monastary above the wee town. We're staying in a cute guesthouse and there were two teddy bears on our bed when we came in. Pretty cute :)