Budapest XIII. kerület

Our last few days in Budapest have been great! On Tuesday we went back to the massive outdoor ice rink I found near the heroes square. It was so cool ice skating outside in the cold, the rink was just a carpark theyd covered with ice but it was so big that it kinda felt like we were doing it on an actual frozen lake. Spencer didn't take to it too easily and spent most of the time wobbling around in the corner. I watched a bunch of ice hockey players skating, they were going so fast and then stopping so aggressively that it sprayed ice everywhere. I wanted to do it so badly and spent the entire time trying but I never quite got it, I think its coz the hire skates were too blunt so they kinda bog down instead of shaving the ice when you turn sideways.

The next day we went to a harry potter themed restaurant near our house. We had to wait a week to get a reservation and there has always been a huge line out the front so we were quite excited to check it out. It was a pretty cool night all in all, normal food in a decorated room, some of the drinks had dry ice in them which was pretty cool.

We also discovered hungarian pizza this week which is delicious (but quite heavy and oily). The base is deep fried like a donut and then they add toppings to that. The toppings aren't melted which made me a little sceptical but it totally worked and it was delicious! I got chilli con carne on mine and spencer got "traditional toppings" which just ended up being ham and cheese.

The novelty of classical churches and cathedrals has completely worn off for us now and as a result we've kind of adopted a "no paying to see them from the inside" policy for the rest of the trip, but the St Stephens Basilica is right across the street from our house and we walked past it so much that we eventually relented and went to check it out. It was very grand and shiny as expected, im always gobsmacked by how high the roofs are in these places.

Our last activity was going to visit the thermal baths. We were initially pretty underwhelmed by the whole thing because it cost $45 to get in and it was literally just a warm public pool. I was ready to leave after an hour but it was so expensive we felt obligated to stay, we ended up getting a few morning beers and just sat back n took it all in. The baths did look really cool with the yellow, classical buildings and the Greek style pillars and all the steam coming up from the water. I'm glad we stayed for as long as we did because I ended up really developing an appreciation for just floating around n being warm. I wasn't bored at all by the end and I felt amazing. The highlight of the day was definitely the sauna and ice bath, we spent ages alternating between those.

I forgot to say this earlier but ive been really surprised by how nice the pastries have been in Budapest, they're always so crispy and flakey, even the ones from the supermarket bakeries.Read more