Day 47 - The Day of the 3000th Geocache…. And it’s a Hungarian cache!

After another wonderful breakfast at my lovely hotel in Bratislava, it was off to the central station this morning for my train to Budapest.

The walk to the station pleasingly took me through Freedom Square, which was a wonderful place for some photos and a couple more geocaches.

I got to the station in plenty of time, but frustratingly the train was running late. It was no major drama though, and the journey itself was a lovely one that offered fairly regular glimpses of the Danube.

Upon arrival in a very sunny Budapest, I put my hotel into Google Maps, and headed off on the 1.5 mile walk over the bridge to….. the wrong hotel! 🤦‍♀️

It was a lovely walk with some great sights, but it was quite warm with a big rucksack on….

I stopped for a drink and a massively overpriced hotdog before finding a bus that took me pretty much back where I had come from! It turns out that I had been sensible enough to book a hotel reasonably close to the station…..

I was very happy to see my hotel - a newly refurbished hotel that seems to have had a merger with its neighbour. I don’t understand, but like the free minibar. It is admittedly just a bottle of coke, some water, and a bottle of beer, but still! When I told Dad this he was quite concerned about whether it was really free, so had to reassure him that not only had the receptionist said it was free, but that there was also a massive sign saying ‘free drinks’ on the fridge.

After cooling off for a bit, I made the short walk down to the Hungarian Parliament building - a mightily impressive building on the banks of the river.

I was delighted to also be able to work it so that my 3000th ever geocache was one at the parliament building, which felt fitting for a politics teacher.

I then had a lovely walk along the river, including the ‘Shoes on the Danube Bank’ memorial to the Holocaust. This felt particularly poignant having seen the shoes at Auschwitz just last week.


Once I had walked far enough, I headed back away from the river and found a lovely little restaurant for dinner before then making it back to my hotel. Pleasingly, I walked to the right one this time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 1 - It Starts……..

Image
Having been thinking and talking about this adventure for months, today rather crept up on me. As well being a little hurried in actually packing a rucksack for up to three months of travel (I had been organised with packing lists, just not the actually putting things in a bag bit), I was also a bit last minute in tying up loose ends at home, mainly the boring things, like sorting out my car tax that I realised expired whilst I am away. It was therefore also a bit of a late night doing the really important things, like finishing the hardback book I had no intention of travelling with, and downloading some shows to watch onto my Chromebook. But, after a bit of last minute re-packing (Do I really need that extra T-shirt? Probably not. Where did I put that charging cable?), my rucksack was ready to go, and I had sorted everything I needed to in my flat. I am pleased to report that I have not left anything in the fridge that is likely to be gross on my return. Then off through the rain to ...
Read more

Day 2 - Touristing it up in Brussels

Image
The Eurostar journey was pretty uneventful yesterday. Despite looking out of the window, I did not see any fish 🐠 as I crossed the Channel, and I made sure I was on the look-out for small boat crossings too.....  It was early evening when I arrived in Brussels. The metro system took me a few minutes (and one journey in the wrong direction) to figure out, but Google Maps did its thing and got me to my hotel safely. The hotel is near the Royal Galleries, close to the Grand Place, and it is pretty busy around as apparently this is a big weekend with Belgian National Day tomorrow.  An evening quest for food (success) was followed by a walk through said Royal Galleries and then a test of my photography skills at the Grand Place. It is, as the name suggests, pretty Grand. Pleasingly for me, there were lots of Geocaching AdLabs around for me to use to learn some history. My visit here was then followed up with some good wandering around, with the highlight undoubtedly the Brussels D...
Read more

Day 3 - Happy Belgian National Day!

Image
Yesterday evening was fairly quiet - a stroll to see Jeanneke Pis, all in the name of gender equality.... and then an ice-cream and soaking up some of the holiday vibes.  Today, in case you did not know, is Belgium's national day. I had read a bit about some celebration events, some of which I am hoping to see this evening, but I did not know that as I walked to find some breakfast this morning, within 100m of my hotel I would stumble upon the whole Belgian royal family arriving for the Te Deum mass at the St Michael and St Gudula Cathedral. Having previously sat opposite the Swedish royal family at a concert in Stockholm when visiting with Lizzy, I am starting to appreciate European royal families turning out for my visits.... Apparently it was King Philippe, Queen Mathilde, and their four children (Elisabeth, Eleonore, Gabriel and Emmanuel) who were there. You can read all about their outfits on the Daily Fail Online, if that's your thing.  Anyway, I enjoyed the experience, ...
Read more