Bonding With Budapest

We scouted out Budapest with a bike tour like in Munich. Apparently, we were the only people who signed up, so it became a very reasonably priced private tour of the city.

We took in the key tourist sights while our guide narrated the history of the city. To sum it up, there’s still a lot of animosity towards the soviets from their post-WWII meddling in Hungarian autonomy. They terrorized the population, really flubbed up the economy, and are remembered about as fondly as the national socialists before them. Many of the original communist monuments have had their hammer and sickles taken off.

We treated ourselves to some traditional Hungarian street food afterwards: Langos (basically funnel cake dough but with savory toppings) and Chimney Cakes (a crispy, sweet dough tube filled with your choice of ingredients).

Our last day in Budapest was forecast to be miserably cold and rainy so we headed to the Gellert bathhouse. Inside were an assortment marble-clad pools of varying size and temperature under beautiful tile mosaic ceilings. We blew through a few hours just lounging in the hot water that streams from the fountains at the back of each thermal bath.

Budapest was my favorite city by far and I wish we’d scheduled more time to explore it. If we had another day, I’d check out the local caves and maybe hit up one of the art museums (and definitely revisit the thermal baths). Rested and relaxed, Kat and I prepped ourselves for the last few days of riding in Hungary before we cross our first (actual) border into Serbia.