On the Buda side of the river are two large hills, they may even be mountains. On Thursday (28th August) we walked up Castle Hill to take in the views which were pretty damn impressive if you looked the right way, looking the wrong way you'd just see an eastern european city, smoggy and dirty. The other hill is the one with the actual castle on it. We spent a while in The Labyrinth, which is a cool set of tunnels now converted into a sort of museum on cave paintings and a comment on modern consumerism. With theme lighting and dramatic music it is definitely worth a visit if you are ever in the area. There is also an impressive church on the hill, and beside it is a small bronze version of it (maybe 1ft high) with braille labels of the various features. What a great way to help the blind visitors to the site, I hope it catches on.

   We wandered the city a lot, enjoyed dinner across town and the safety of our own room when we returned. Though there was never any real hint of danger somehow the image I have of Budapest at night has always been a slighty shady one. Though we had constantly been assured there was no reason to book tickets on the train to Austria, we were lucky to get seats. It's always hard to tell if they mean 'Reservations are not needed (but this is a really busy line so you should buy them or risk being thrown off)' or 'Reservations are not needed (because you are the only people interested in going there at that time)'. We walked the length of the train, and found spare seats right at the end, then headed back to Austria.

Watch the video (2.9Mb)

   OK, we left Vienna this morning after another meal at Centimeters. This time Craig got a shovel of Mish mash, i.e. pasta, sausage, ham etc etc in a large shovel. He has taken a photo so I will get him to add it later and he barely even made a dent in it. Last night I ran into 2 girls from high school (Sam McCabe and Philippa ???), they were just in the hostel bar. It was really weird, I was just going through the "that girl looks like philippa" when she turned and looked at me and yelled. Craig has been scanning crowds the whole trip looking for mates and here I was finding someone. Apparently after that I deserved a thump, Boys!!!!

   Today we got to Budapest. A town made up of two towns Buda and Pest. We kinda got forced into a skanky hostel by some freaks on the train. The hostel had boy/girl showers with no doors. The toilets in Hungary have no loo paper so together made for a horrible experience, Craig and I left without paying anything (we did the whole we have no forints bit). We couldn't find anyone who sold tram tickets and then we got a wee bit lost, we were looking for a McDonalds to locate us and we couldn't find it. Can you believe that there was no huge glowing M which you could see from the other side of town. Otherwise Budapest looks cool and now we are going exploring!

Added a link to our schedule on the menu on the right of your screen, check it out if you want to predict where we will be.
.

Watch the video (3.8Mb)