Lunch at Caru’ cu Bere in the old part of the city, neat place, from 1879. Great food, black beer, black bread, steak and potatoes basically, again the potatoes here are stunning.

He wanted it built in 2 years, 20,000 workers working 8 hours shifts 24 hours a day spent 6 years on it before it was considered completed, in actuality only about 400 of the 1100 rooms are finished and despite being the seat of government almost the entire building is empty.

RUG FACTS! It also features the largest rug in the world, weighing just over 6000 pounds and requiring 40 people to roll or unroll.

Arrived around 4pm, changed money, bought metro pass, got keys to my place (which is really nice), ate a burger and did laundry… I guess you could say today is…. a wash!!!! *puts on sunglasses*

Budapest’s subway system is a very special one actually, it is the second oldest in the world, after the London Underground, and has been running under the city since 1896!

The system is made up of four lines:

M4 – Green Line: this is the newest line, the trains are nearly silent and the stations are kinda futuristic, the running stock is the same as several other cities including Istanbul where I will be soon.

M3 – Blue Line: clearly from when Hungary was part of the USSR, awesome old blue tin toaster looking cars, loud and rough and wonderful.

M2 – Red Line: the heavy lifting line, appears to handle the majority of traffic, same style of cars as the M4 but older and louder

M1 – Yellow Line: what a cool surprise the yellow line turned out to be, this is the original line from 1896 and what I didn’t expect was that this line still runs the ooooollld trains in the old stations, so cute.

But what about signage and right-of-ways you ask?

Pretty good but when compared to Prague it’s a bit of a mess, in quite a few stations the signage indicating which fork you should be taking is actually after that fork, you have to go right or left to find the signs telling you if you needed to go right or left, this leads to a lot of doubling back.

On the plus side most stations have a bakery in them, right underground and not just a kiosk with baked goods but a real little self contained bakery with ovens and rhe whole deal. These stations smell awesome.

What a superb day, best yet but it is time to leave.

Got my butt out of bed around 5:30am in order to make it to the Turkish bathhouse before the crowds as the bathhouse experience is pretty far outside my comfort zone. Walking along the river in the pre-dawn light looking for the bathhouse while listening to Knautic is pretty trippy.

When I arrived the place was really dark, walked in and wandered around until I found someone, she laughed and said “You are first one!” and then explained all the workings, etiquette and procedures as you would to a small child who does not speak your language, she seemed to get a kick out of me at least.

Maybe I didn’t need to show up quite so early but I did have the entire complex to myself for the first hour. Soaked in various pools, cooked in various saunas and had a 90 minute rubdown, the whole experience was as close to fully blissed-out as I think I get.

Coffee and croissant breakfast, handed in the keys to my place to Gabby and stashed my pack at the train station (no one would give me change for the lockers so I devised the genius plan of changing Hungarian forints to euros at one exchange and then taking the euros to the exchange on the other side of the station and changing them back to forints, coins only please).

Was on the bus headed for the Hungarian National Gallery and realized I was having more fun just wandering, got off bus and spent the rest of the day exploring different neighborhoods at random based on where I felt like getting off subway.

Stopped at my bar for a last cocktail before my night train to Romania, all the bartenders were super friendly, made me Hungarian themed cocktails and did shots of plum brandy, Boutique Bar was a really great find.

After drinks I had just enough time to stop in at the schwarma place by my airbnb for one last fix of chicken breast schnitzel and spanish rice, same thing I had every night on my way home, told the girl there it was my last Budapest meal and she handed back most of my money and packed me a bag of pastries for the train, I cannot make this up, wow.

Back to train station, confusion, drink addled brain plus indifferent staff meant I missed my train. Asked many people what my options were, heard many different stories, basically was told to wait for the next train in 2 hours and talk to the conductor.

Very humbly presented my missed ticket to the conductor when the next train to Romania pulled in, he gave me a list of things I had to do and 15 minutes to do them in, lol, ran around the station like Jason Bourne getting stamps and currency and forms all while watching the station clock tick down to departure, hopped on board very happily with a couple minutes to spare, in a small, odd bunk but I do have it to myself. 17 hours to Bucharest!

Goodbye Budapest, a really friendly and pulsing city, all Pro here, the only Con was dropping my phone.

SOUNDTRACK: various artists although I found that the Byrdsian harmonies of The Posies worked really well, listened to Blood/Candy and Frosting on the Beater and Dear 23 multiple times, all great albums.

“So, Caroline” my fav Posies track.

Headed to KFC for their famous Eleven Herbs & WiFi and spent the next hour or two getting the phone up and running, arghy waste but what can you do…

Headed back home after the mall and ran into my host Gabriella, had a lovely chat, she is, like so many Airbnb hosts, someone who seems to be made for hosting. I mentioned that I hadn’t even been over to the Buda side of the river yet, she pushed me out the door and made me promise to climb the hill to the castle and not take the bus up, lol.

Walked the entire historic area with old churches and the Fort and Buda Castle, all of it amazing, a city really is a different thing when it this much history.