Celebrating my mum's 60th in Budapest

Before we got to Budapest, we spent 3 nights in Serbia, and 1 night on the train from Montenegro to Serbia. The train ride was absolutely horrible. We left around 6pm and had to spend a couple hours at the station waiting. Wasn't much to do there as it was pretty much isolated and the station was just a platform. There were some stray dogs in the area so we petted a few and I think I must have got a bug from one of them because I started to feel sick half way through the train trip. On the train we stuck out like sore thumbs, being the only English speaking people on the train. We went through 4 passport control checks and were easy targets from there on. I got checked several times at each stop as the officers made their way through the carriage. Once that concluded we had a 10 hour ride until our stop in Serbia, Belgrade.

As soon as I stepped off the train, I vomited, and it took me the whole 3 nights here to recover. We got into Belgrade at 7am and had to wait 3 hours before we could check into our Airbnb, so we went to a park near and sat for majority of the time. I was sick another 3 times while there. This whole trip up until now I had been fine but I think having the long travel to Montenegro and lack of sleep, then this long train ride with no sleep really made me vulnerable. And what ever I picked up from the dog. We finally got to check in and you could probably guess what happened. The next 3 nights I stayed in bed and barely ate. Just drank water and had some medicine. Slept on and off each day but slowly recovered. Caroline did a great job looking after me and putting up with lifeless Jack. The last day I was feeling better and we went out and had dinner in the city.

Belgrade was pretty average on arrival but going into the main hub on the last day it seemed like it could have been a place to enjoy.

We had another long train ride to Budapest which I was worried about, but it went by a little easier than the last one thankfully.

I think we arrived around midday, and then had to walk about 30 minutes to the hostel we had booked for 4 nights. We stayed at Avenue Hostel which was a great place. Our time there was fun and we met some cool people which we've kept in touch with. Arriving 14th August, we did a lot of walking around the first couple days to get the layout of the area we were staying in and just to see what was around. Budapest is split into Districts and the hostel was located inside District 6, bordering pretty close to District 7, which is also called the Jewish Quarter. We spent most our time out around District 7 because that's where a large majority of all the bars and nightlife is located. We ended up doing a bar crawl with the hostel on the third night which was awesome. It was a small crew of 6 but it ended up being so fun and we linked up with a few other people who were staying at hostels near by. We had a couple from New Zealand and a guy from Melbourne in our group. I don't know how it happens but I always end up meeting others from Australia. Our hostel guide took us out and we were going to 4 bars I think. On the first stop Caroline and I decided to drop the Never Ending Drinking Game on the unsuspecting pub crawlers. Always a good game to start the night off as you always end up drinking and it's a good way to meet other people. We had 3 others from another hostel join and then we carried our night on to the rest of the bars and clubs.

The next day we caught up with Anita and Matt, friends of my mum's who live in Budapest for a drink which turned into another night out. We met at Szimpla kert which is one of the first established Ruin Bars in Budapest. We walked in and it was so awesome to see, it is a very large open building with several bars and eateries spread out around the place.

From here we went onto another few places I have forgotten the names of, but were just as good, and my friend from Melbourne I met the other night, Matthew, joined us later in the night, as well as one of Caroline's friends who was in Budapest for a couple days for work.

The next day we checked out of the hostel and made our way to the Villa my mum had booked on the other side of the river, called the Buda side, at Villa Albert. It was a great location but very isolated from the centre and a little difficult to travel to and from, as Taxis were the only form of transport to Pest side and back again. The taxis rarely made their way over and it didn't help that there was 8 of us because we needed to order 2 taxis whenever we wanted to go to the city. Caroline and I got to the villa and met mum, Stuart and Harry for the first time in 4 months. We also had mum's friends John, Chris and Abbie who were staying with us at the Villa for the next week, so a whole crew of us which was great.

Mum had booked the Villa from the 18th to 25th August which worked well, because we were flying out to Spain, Valencia on the 25th for La Tomatina.

The first night we just stayed in and ordered food. Mum had ordered some groceries for our stay but they weren't coming until the next day so it was pizza for tonight.

Over the next week we made the most of our time here and went to the city centre pretty often. We visited the Gellert Thermal Bath, Citadel lookout point, Went to a VR game cafe and played some horror games over beer, visited lots of bars and cafes. Went out again with the New Zealand couple to Stifler pool and played a bunch of games. Mum had organised a dinner cruise for us all to celebrate her Birthday on St Stephen's Day. Our Villa had a pool so we made use of that quite often when we weren't out. And also managed to see an orchestra play live in front of the St. Stephen's Basilica.

All in all it was a very full and fun week.

The 25th snuck in and Caroline an I were catching a flight out. Everyone had to catch flights out so we all went to the airport together. Mum was heading to Finland, Stuart and Harry were going to Prague, and John,Chris and Abbie were going back to U.K. We said our goodbyes but it wasn't long until we saw everyone again as we only had 1 week left of our trip!

Catch next weeks blog as we participate in the largest food fight on earth, La Tomatina in Bunol, and spend the last a few days in Barcelona.