We arrived in Budapest looking forward to a longer stay as we were booked in to our apartment here for 4 nights. The apartment was located right in the middle of the Jewish quarter on the Pest side of the Danube. I only learned not long ago that this city used to be 2 cities, Buda and Pest. Today it is united as Budapest, the name that everyone knows. So driving into the old Jewish quarter we are talking about really narrow streets and lots of pedestrians, bikes and scooters (more about the scooters later!) We have a little trouble finding it, and Google has the one way streets going the wrong way. As we are doing our second lap around a large block we decide we need to stop and maybe go for a look on foot, so I pull over to park behind another car and all of a sudden a taxi appears and almost hits us! He starts beeping his horn and yelling out at us then decides to go around us. The thing is there was a policeman standing on the footpath and sees the whole thing and he decides to come over for a chat. We were a bit worried, we’d just arrived in Hungary and almost had an accident in front of a policeman! So he comes over and we wind down the window and I just say sorry to him a few times. He worked out that we didn’t speak Hungarian within 5 seconds so he asks us where we are going in English, we said the street name and he pointed so we said thank you and very quickly got going again. We knew where the street was, we just couldn’t find the entrance to the apartment and there was no where to stop in the street, but all of this didn’t matter when faced with a policeman in a foreign country.

After the run in with the policeman we found somewhere to park, I went on foot and managed to find it and checked in. There was an underground car park thankfully but this involved bending the car around a corner into the narrow entrance from the tiny street. It required about a 10 point turn but we stopped the traffic for a while and managed to get in. The apartment was a decent size with 2 bedrooms, but it was a bit beat-up. A section of kitchen bench and cupboards had come away from the wall, the place looked like it had a major water leak issue, several times we felt water through the timber floor and to top it all off there was mould on the wall near the bathroom. We could have complained but we don’t think it would have got us anywhere, but I did tell them at the end that it is probably something that needs to be checked out. The truth is, it is probably still there today, but it was the price and location that got us through.

This was all however secondary to the fact that Budapest is such a beautiful city. We absolutely loved it, there is lot of very interesting architecture from the Parliament building on one side of the Danube to the Fisherman’s Bastion looking over the city from the other side. There are churches such as the magnificent St Stephens Basilica and the Dohany Street Synagogue, which was right near us in the Jewish quarter. There was also the famous Szechenyi Thermal Baths, but due to some misinformation we were unable to go inside for a tour. The website said tours were running but when we actually got there they said there were no tours over winter. We would have actually gone into the baths themselves but they don’t recommend them for children, and besides Ella would have over heated in 5 minutes flat. There were other more children friendly thermal baths complete with water slides but we didn’t really want the girls to pick up any vomiting bugs before heading to skiing.

We had talked about renting Lime Scooters during our trip and decided that riding along the Danube river would be the perfect place to do it. We could take in some of the sights such as the Parliament building and the Fishermans Bastion. Ella went with Amy and I had Abbie, and they both had their ski helmets on. All was going well until we hit a big bump and Abbie smacked her mouth on the front of the scooter, next thing you know there is blood everywhere! I know that cut lips bleed but this was looking bad. We both actually thought for a minute that we would have to go to hospital for a stitch or 2. I went running to a nearby cafe for something to stop the bleeding while Amy started mopping it up with Abbie’s neck warmer. Thankfully stitches were not required on this occasion. We were a little bit more careful after the scooter incident, Abbie then hopped off every time we had to cross a road, or go across any bumpy sections.

On one of our days we did a tour of the Parliament building, which was completely unexpected. It wasn’t on our list but we were walking past and decided to go in and see what it was all about. We saw they had am English speaking tour coming up so decided to give it a go. We are so glad we did as it was amazing, we saw the Holy Crown of Hungary and 1 of the chambers where parliament sits. Apparently they have 2 identical chambers which were previously used for government but now 1 of them is mainly used for tours and meetings.

This wraps up our amazing 4 nights in Budapest, it is a fascinating city with a lot to see. We absolutely loved it and glad we spent some extra time here. It looks like it can be a bit of a party town so it was good that we we were there during the week. We were staying in the older part of town right amongst the pubs and it wasn’t too noisy. The apartment was a bit dodgy but good enough for the few days and the location was great. We can highly recommend Budapest, it has a bit of everything, including one of the largest parliament buildings in Europe. Time for the 6 hour drive back past Vienna to Salzburg.