23. Budapest Part 1 of 3

I arrived in Budapest at 2am, exhausted after a delayed flight from Dublin. It was a mere 16 hours after I had left home by bus!

My host David had provided me with excellent detailed tips on how to get to his apartment in the city centre. I had to walk about 1.5km from the night bus stop, so I decided to use the Bolt app that I had already downloaded. Bolt is an alternative to Uber, popular in Eastern Europe, which some say is cheaper.

David's apartment was at the back of an internal courtyard on the third floor. In its heyday it would have been a very grand home, with very high corniced ceilings and tiled floor. 

It was his childhood home and as he now lives in Spain he has joined the HomeExchange community. It was stuffed with books, cds, childhood memories and three tvs!! As it had no shower, I had my first bath in a decade with the limitless hot water on tap. 

In the morning, after a nice strong coffee, I  activated my BudapestGo three-day travel pass and headed into the city. I used the very clean and modern metro and was there in 5 minutes. 

My first impression of the historic Pest side of the river was very positive, as the following photos show. 

I did some research on brunch places, as it was already 11am, and found Cafe Brunch (top marks for originality!) which caught my eye as it was getting 5 stars on Google and 4.5 on TripAdvisor. 

I ordered Hungarian Scrambled Eggs, a mix of red onions, peppers (of course), Hungarian and spicy paprika sausage,  cooked with lashings of butter. It was served with a side salad and two types of bread roll. Delicious! The place was way over-priced though, this came in at 5,700 HUF or €14.50 !!  I vowed to  double check the currency conversion rate going forward and avoid tourist traps. I should have gone across the square to the one below - I just took the picture for my daughter Anna!

End of part 1.