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Published: January 25th 2008
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After a luxurious sleep in and a fairly ok breakfast we set off for our day around Budapest around noon. We used our travel passes to get us to the city park where we had a brief look around. The Szechenyi thermal baths are right next to the metro stop so we went in and sussed out the prices etc for our visit tomorrow. In the ground around the baths there is steam coming out of the drains which add an eerie effect to a wintery park with snow laying on the ground. Around the corner from the baths is the Grand Circus which looked fun but slightly strange as there was no one around it and I thought that the clown looked slightly derranged.
We were disappointed with the park believing it to be the tiny bit that we could see in that general vacinity and instead walked towards a giant manor house/castle type building. Once we had walked through the gates and around the garden area we realised that there was a huge park in front of us and that we were standing in the grounds of a rather impressive national museum. We walked around the park for
a while and were amused to see a group of men playing table tennis on tables that were sitting on the snow in the middle of the park. Next to the museum there is what would normally be a huge duck pond, however a large part of it had been dried out for use as an ice rink. We got there just at the end of a skating session and so we got to watch the ice machine things go around and re ice the rink. It looked extremely fun except for the slightly eerie military music that was being played over the loudspeakers which we think may have been Christmas museum.
Heros square is something that was on our list of things to do from the very first day, unfortunately it is on everyone elses list as well. We arrived there and found ourselves in the middle of numerous tour groups being sheparded around the monuments and being informed in vast detail about the history of each of the figures. Normally we would eavesdrop on an English speaking tour but it was too cold to stand around and to be perfectly honest we were more interested in the
way the square looked and not the history of it. We got our photos and marvelled at the prettyness of it and then headed for Andrassy Avenue which is one of the nicest and oldest streets in Budapest. We walked down the length of it and looked at the different embassies and all the expensive hotels and restaurants that we would never be able to afford. We also passed the House of Terror which we entertained the idea of visiting until we saw a sign that said that students could visit for free on Sundays. We decided to leave it for tomorrow and go for a little bit of shopping instead.
Vaci Utca is supposedly the primary shopping street in Pest so began our trip there. It was busy and atmospheric and all the shops were playing Christmas music so it was fun, but it was mainly clothes shops which didn't aid us much in our quest to find presents. We did however find a really cute Christmas shop which we enjoyed looking around until we attempted to leave and we were almost pushed backwards by the sheer amount of people coming into the shop. After Vaci we had
another brief look around the Christmas market however it was so busy that we were quite happy to escape into the metro and head towards Marmot shopping centre in Buda. We shopped for a while in the centre and I wistfully eyed up clothing like only someone who is wearing badly repaired trousers could do.
We hung around the hostel and updated travelblog etc so that we don't have to do it when we get home for Christmas. There were a few people around so we chatted to them and basically wasted time until we could go out for food. We opted for a Buddhist/vegan restaurant that Ghandi has visited in the past. We had two guidebooks that varied massively the description of the place; one said it was a budget place and the other said it was in the highest price category. We got there and checked it out and realised it was definately on the cheap side. The food was delicious, however it felt like we were at a soup kitchen with the canteen counters and the stainless steel plates etc. We both opted for the student meal that was two pounds and consisted of soup, bread
and some weird fried things. We also had beautiful homemade lemonade with ginger. Once we finished our mains we returned to the counter and bought two deserts that were very tasty. The entire meal cost around seven pounds which you most certainly cannot argue with. We had initially planned for a proper sit down meal and so we actually finished eating a lot earlier than we had anticipated. We simply returned to the hostel and continued to upload travelblogs and chat on Skype until we were ready for bed.
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