Budapest. Picturesque city, Hungarian goulash, car booted, free walking tour, couch surfing, interesting people and beautiful scenery.
Arriving at midnight after we were held up yet again by roadwork’s, we asked our host if she would like us to stay at a hostel tonight as we were 45mins later than the time she said we could come.
Happens Rita didn’t get our text message, so she wasn’t the happiest person when we rocked up, but after showing her the messages and attempted calls, all was good.
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Today we had a free walking tour planned. Driving into the city we found a place to park, which was only a tow away zone in a couple days time due to an event. Anyways we were hesitant so asked 2 people (plus our guide) if it was ok to park there and everyone said yes because it was a Saturday so free parking. However, it wasn’t…
Our tour started at 10:30AM and like most tours we were split into groups of 30. The majority of our group was Germans, but we found a fellow Aussie and Kiwi as well.
We found in Budapest we had to rub lots of different statues for good luck, ranging from an 8 year old girls knee to an old man’s belly.
The Kiskiralylany Szobor (Little Princess Statue)
The fat policeman
Rubbing his belly as he is the good luck charm for good food
The tour goes for 2-3 hours and has a bit of walking involved, but what do you expect from a walking tour 🙂
Neptune’s Fountain
St. Stephen’s Basilica
The lion who guards the bridge
We went to a great view spot, where you can see a lot of the city, here we also saw the changing of the guards, which was funny to watch.
Changing of the guards
New recruits 😉
View of Pest
Leaving our tour early as Rita wanted to meet up at 2PM, we went to the meeting spot and received a message saying she was going to be an hour later..So we decided to wander around the city by ourselves. Tim found a Ferrari dealership and a magical fountain, which lowers the water when you come close to it so that you can be surrounded by the water.
Our new ride!
Magic Fountain
Finally meeting up with Rita we grabbed a bite to eat at a raw, vegan restaurant and had a coffee. After a couple of hours Rita had to leave for yoga so we said goodbye and agreed to meet in a few hours time for some drinks.
Raw and Vegan
Coffee in town sqaure
Rubbing twice for double the good luck 🙂
Enjoying a goulash, as you need to in Hungary 🙂 we walked around the city at night. I do have to say that Budapest is the only place so far that we felt unsafe walking around the streets at night.
Heading back to our car, we found it was booted. Talking to the lady in the hairdressers in front of where we were parked, she said that it is a common scam for tourists as you need to pay to have the boot removed. Looking around there were definitely no signs saying you couldn’t park there (Saturdays are free) and the tow away zone wasn’t for a couple days time. However, because we were in a rental car, we stood out.
Having to call the ‘boot removalists’ we paid our 15,000HUF (Hungarian Forits), which is about $75, or €50. I really did think it was funny, but it made Budapest (a relatively cheap city) quite expensive.
BOOTED!!
After the boot was removed we drove around to some scenic spots and took photos of Budapest at night.
We then caught up with Rita and a few other people at Andersen’s Pub where we bought a meter beer (10 x 330mls of beer) for $4, which is an up 🙂
The next day we said our goodbyes to Rita and headed towards Bratislava, Slovakia onward bounds to Vienna, Austria.
Our host Rita
