Budapest, and start of Intrepid tour to Eger

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10 OCTOBER - BUDAPEST

Woke up bright and early so that I could absolutely exhaust myself by walking around for the next 7 hours. Pretty much walked half of Budapest. Started with the basicilla, heroes place, baths, various monuments and churches until I decided to go through the Horror Museum - all about the war. At the basicilla I climbed to the top, as I didnt realise that there was a lift. Got more than enough exercise...

After lunch I headed to Castle Hill to see the palace and fishermens basion. Also went to the History Museum and spent a few hours there.

When I got back to the hostel there was a stack of new people there and just chilled for a little while. Soma and I headed to a restaurant for dinner at around 730pm or so, after which we joined the rest of the hostel at a pub and proceeded to do another pub crawl. Think I ended up making it to bed around 630am or so.

11 OCTOBER - BUDAPEST

Work up at 1030am and realised that I had missed the cooking course I had signed up to do. Doh. Spent the morning basicallz just veging before hitting the markets for some shopping briefly with some people from the hostel before heading to the city baths for some swimming and chilling in the warm water. Fantastic setting too to chill. They even had a whirlpool that came on and off in the centre of one of the outdoor baths. So good. Got back into the hostel at around 630pm and I grabbed some take away mexican food and watched some TV before heading out at around 10pm or so for another pub crawl. Didnt drink this time though and left them all in the final pub at around 330am because I decided that I needed sleep more than anything.

12 OCTOBER - BUDAPEST

Tour officially started on 12 October, which meant time to check out of the hostel and into a hotel. But I would still be sharing with other people. After checking into the hotel I went and saw the synagogue and then jumped on one of the hop on and off buses to get a bit of a tour of the city, and, more importantly, to go up and see the view from gellerts hill and the independence monument. Also decided to go into the castle which also had a museum.

At 6pm we had our group meeting where I soon discovered that pretty much all of the people I would be travelling with were to be aussies. Of the 13 of us, 11 are aussies, one is american and one is Canadian, married to an Aussie. Predominantly females in the group, three guys and the tour leader is a German guy. After the meeting and the formalities, it was time for dinner where we had issues with ordering of drinks and the waiter was quite rude about it. I think it was all a language misunderstanding really.

Had a relatively early night in preparation for start of tour in the morning.

13 OCTOBER - BUDAPEST TO EGER

Met at 10am and got the metro to the train station and then got a train to Eger. Train arrived after lunch and after checking into the pension we headed out with Stefan (group leader) for a quick walking tour. Went and saw some nice views over the pretty little town and had a look at their church as well.

At about 7pm we headed out for wine tasting as Eger is famous for its bulls blood (red wine). For wine tasting they definitely gave us a fair bit of wine, all of which was quite tasty, but I didnt buy any as I didnt want to have to carry it around with me. Then we had dinner at this nice restaurant next door. Food was quite good, and in the next room there was a few people who insisted on singing and dancing. So a few people from our group also sang them the Aussie national anthem which they found quite amusing I think. Not much else in the town so after dinner we walked back to the pension for a relatively early night again.

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