Budapest is Best!

Monday, July 25, 2016
Budapest, Budapest, Hungary
We left home bright and early at 5:30 and headed for the crowded Luton Airport. Ended up waiting for about an hour in line before boarding the Wizz Air flight, with a few stag parties on board. Everything was tickety-boo until, we arrived in Budapest and got our bags (1st off the luggage carousel!) We sniffed out the Wizz Air airport transfer bus and found out it would pick us up from a car park about 20mins walk from the airport, next to a building site. We waited, along with a pregnant women and a pair of Londoners complaining about their Hungarian Airport Salads, under the baking hot Hungarian sun for about an hour until the bus finally turned up! And then he (the bus driver) said... 5minutes please.
Eventually ... after that debacle we arrived at the ROOMBach hotel in the centre of Budapest. Brilliant, 3* hotel with fantastic staff and gorgeous Greek Yoghurt at breakfast. Gorgeous. We had a little walk and went to my first ever synagouge! Synagouge was nice, but if I'm honest messing around with the paper kippers we had to wear distracted me slightly... Anyway, after that we visited the House of Terror, which was rather moving to see so graphically the terrible recent history that has blighted Hungary.
On the 2nd day, we went to the Hungaroring and saw qualifying. And got absolutely soaked! The session had a record of 4 red flags (stoppages) due to the conditions and many drivers including Marcus Ericsson, Rio Haryanto and Felipe Massa crashed in the wet conditions. I saw a lot of qualifying from under a Dutchman's umbrella, his umbrella was blocking my view of the track so I popped my head under it and asked whether he was okay with it. He was Dutch, so of course he was, Dad got in on the act as well (although not the same umbrella ...)
The 3rd day was race day (sunday) and if I'm honest the 2016 Hungarian Grand Prix won't go down as the greatest ever race in F1. Not the worst, but then also not a good race either... Pretty much decided in the 1st 2 corners when Hamilton took the lead at turn 1, and Rosberg who had dropped to 3rd got back ahead of Ricciardo to get 2nd, crucial as otherwise the race would have been interesting. Still it was fantastic to see Kimi Raikkonen battle Max Verstappen, having started 14th, Hamilton blitzed the race, and the sun blitzed my knees, burning them to a singe whilst the rest of the body remained pure white.
For me the best memories of sunday were from the evening walk around Central Budapest where I doubled up as a photographer and experimented with taking night time photos of the lit up Buda Castle and Parliament Building. On the final day, we returned to Buda Castle in the Siklo (a sort of cable car thingy) which was really nice, and had great views over Budapest. Budapest is an absolutely stunning city, I have never been anywhere with so many beautiful historical buildings all so close to each other! However, I had been to many places with similarly high numbers of Japanese tourists.
We ended our trip to Budapest at the beautiful basilica, climbing up and having another view across the city. Budapest is without doubt an absolutely stunning city and I would love to return, especially to go and visit the baths which we didn't have time to see. The Hungarian, Italian and Vietnamese cuisine we had out in Hungary was also marvellous, particularly Little Miss Saigon Restaurant.

Viszontlatasra Budapest!!

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