Istanbul —> Budapest, Hungary

After a short but good sleep, we said an emotional goodbye to our new friends, Amy, Babs and Marissa, and joined Tommy in a taxi to the airport. It only took about 45 minutes to get to the airport (luckily we didn't get stuck in any crazy Istanbul traffic!)

Tommy from the UK was doing a 6 month sabbatical and he was the first person we met on the first day of the trip in Ecuador in March. He finished his sabbatical in Turkey so it was very fitting that we got to be the last people he saw as he headed back to the UK for work!

As we approached our gate to board the plane, we were approached by an airline member who proceeded to offer us €250 (just over $400AUD) each to catch a flight 5hrs later to Budapest. Apparently they had overbooked our flight and had to free up a few spaces! We thought about it for a few minutes and decided to take the offer as we had no afternoon plans and the cash was definitely worth it (which we will no doubt enjoy in the coming weeks of our trip!)

After we had sorted out the ‘compensation’ money transfer, we got some lunch (with food vouchers provided by the airline of course!) and headed to a ‘youth lounge’ in the airport. This is only accessible to 15-30 years old where we were able to use wifi to call home, do a bit of forward planning and even played some Fifa on PlayStation!

After a healthy near 10 hours at Istanbul airport (which definitely felt shorter!) we boarded our flight to Budapest, Hungary and arrived around 8pm. One very easy airport bus transfer later and we were in central Budapest and checked into our amazing hostel which has a bar and nightclub inside it! We went for a walk around some of the bars around which were all really loud and pumping at 10pm on a Thursday night and saw some of the areas we would be exploring over the next few days.Read more