So I arrived in Budapest bright and early for another swelteringly hot day, after having managed fairly little sleep. Definately prefer night buses to night trains.
The public transport system is pretty great in the city, although unfortunmately the Metro was having some work done on the really useful line that I was planning on using to get to my hostel. The trams and buses are regular, clean, and not too unpleasantly hot (despite the weather), but you have to buy the tickets before you get on the bus/tram, and sometimes finding places that sell them is a bit of a pain.
I don't know if I've been really lucky with hostels or whether they're just all really, really good but I would also recomment the Grand Hostel in Buda. The only possibly criticism is that it's a bit of a trek to get anywhere, but there's a tram that stops about 200m away so it's not really a problem. However, on my arrival as a hot, sticky, sweating lump of ming, I found that the road works had accidently turned their water supply off and it would take a coupla of hours to fix. There was really nothing in the world I needed more than a shower at that point, so I figured sod the sightseeing, I'd go and try out one of the many famous spas.
I headed to Szechenyi Furdo (insert your own accents), the biggest and apparently the best in Pest. It's close to Hero's Square, housed in a great looking old building that dominates the park in which it's located. It has an outdoor poor and a huge complex of saunas and thermal spas. But first stop: the showers. Bliss. Once de-minged, I headed to the outdoor pool then explored some of the indoor thermal pools. As it was a hot day,the place was fairly full of people. I made some friends with some people entirely on the basis that I heard them speak in English. Shortly after striking up a conversation, some more random folk came to join us for exactly the same reason. It ended up more like an aquatic social club for travellers. Brilliant afternoon. After swimming, I finally got a game of leapfrog out here (woo!) and some of us went to have a hearty meal and sample some of the local beer. It was also a brilliant evening. I like it when life gets random.
I think I'm getting used to this hot weather but it has meant I've spent a lot more time sitting around in parks and pools and a lot less time sightseeing than I originally intended. Oh, and I have been largely living off chocolate ice cream and salads as it's too warm to consider anything else. I've managed to avoid sunburn for the most part (my shoulders went a bit pink in Chisinau the day I switched to a sleeve-less t-shirt, despite the factor 50+), but I do appear to have gained a bit of a tan. Well, lost the edge off my English pastiness for the first time in many, many years.
Anyways, this was my second time to Budapest and I still failed to go and see the castle, or the labrinthe, or any of the other cool stuff. My list of things to do 'next time' just keeps getting longer. By mid-afternoon I was off to my next destination: Bratislava.
