Attack of the Flying Rats

Stop #4...Budapest. Actually, Buda and Pest as they are technically 2 seperate places, seperated by the Danube. I have to say, definitely not my favourite stop on the trip thus far. We arrived safely from Prague to a sweltering 40 degrees in Budapest. AWESOME! We had seen the forecast and knew it would be warm but I'm not going to lie....40 degrees is even warmer then you think! We found our hostel (in Pest) easily and settled in. The hostel was great, very homey and lots of nice people staying there. We found that there's no where in Budapest that exchanges travellers cheques. After panicking, we found an ATM that our Canadian bank cards worked at, so all was well.

We decided to go on a walking tour the next day so we set off in search of the main square where the tour was to start. It was another boiling hot day and the humidity was killing us. The walking tour took us past all the main sights....Heroes Square, the Thermal Baths, the Opera House, St Stephen's Basillica, the Jewish Ghetto and then across the Danube to Buda to see the castle and the Fisherman`s Bastion. We had a bite of lunch and headed back to the hostel as the heat was killing us and we were just drained.

The next day, we headed back to Buda to take some pics and do some souvineer shopping....again, it was freakin hot!!!! We took a trip to the Thermal Baths in the afternoon and it was fantastic! There were 4 different pools with each having a different temperature....the 18 degree pool felt so cold but awesome at the same time....it was the first time in 3 days that we weren't hot and sweaty! We met a nice Austrailian couple at the hostel that evening and just spent some time chatting with them.

We were going to catch a later train the next day to Vienna, but given the heat, we decided to leave earlier in hopes of finding a somewhat more temperate climate. All in all, a good stop, but the heat definitely impeded our ability to wander around and explore.

Vienna's the next stop and I'm so looking forward to it, heard so many great things about that city.

Later!

Megs