Budapest // Travel with me

Last summer, I went on an Interrail trip. And one of the places I visited was Budapest. I was always going to write a blog post on that but never got around to doing it. Until now. Better late than never, right? (This is also more for myself than anything because I want to be able to look back on these trips and remember.)

I took the train to Budapest from Sankt Anton Am Arlberg, Austria. The first four hours were to get to Vienna, and from there I got on the train to Budapest. And that train was horrible. It was around 40 degrees and there was no airconditioning.

But I did meet a girl from Germany on the train. A few years younger than me, also on an Interrail trip, and an amazing artist. And this is why I loved going on this trip – sitting on a train, you are so much more likely to meet and talk to people than you are flying somewhere.

I got a taxi to my hotel room (at this point, I didn’t want to walk in the heat), and quickly unpacked my stuff. Due to a complete change in weather, I didn’t actually have enough clothes for the heat, so I walked to the nearest shopping centre where I found a cute pair of short dungarees, a pair of shorts and two crop tops to get me through. I had some delicious sushi for dinner and then made my way back to the hotel, where I fell asleep pretty quickly.

The next day, I’d had a sightseeing tour booked on one of those hop-on-hop-off buses. Very touristy, but an easy way to get to the most historic parts of the city without completely killing your feet.

What was really interesting to learn, was that Buda and Pest are two different parts of the city, divided by the river Danube. (Maybe I would’ve known that if I’d paid more attention during geography lessons…) The architecture in Budapest was amazing – so different from the architecture in Western Europe that I’m used to.

On my second day in Budapest, I actually went on a boat tour on the river. As we were waiting for the tour to start, the sky suddenly darkened and the rain started to pour down for about 15 minutes. And when it stopped, it was as if nothing had ever happened. This was the first time I experienced a rainstorm like this and it was absolutely amazing.

Highlights in Budapest

• the castle, for the most amazing view over the city
• Margaret Island – a small island in the middle of the Danube where you can walk and enjoy nature in the city.
• Fény Street Market for amazing local products and food
• the house of parliament – ridiculously large

There’s so much more to see and do in Budapest. I did a lot of wandering around on the streets, tried loads of different foods and went on a boat trip on the Danube. (Right before the boat left, the skies suddenly went dark and there was a heavy rainstorm, that then ended after only ten minutes. It was almost as if it hadn’t been raining at all!

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This was the last city I visited during my Interrail trip. The last day, I got up ridiculously early to start the 12-hour train ride back to the Netherlands, where I would spend another week with my parents before going back to England.

Have you ever been on an Interrail trip? Where did you go? 🙂