My stay in Budapest was to be a short one: two nights, meeting up with Andy and pals after Sziget. As expected, they were exhausted, fighting sickness and suffering from mild cases of post festival blues. Luckily for me, they’d saved the bulk of their sightseeing until after the festival, so I got to see most of the city’s highlights in a mere 24 hours. 

My 6 hour bus from Prague was delayed almost two hours, so I arrived basically to get ready for bed. That’s okay though, I was tired and as already noted, so were they! The next morning we were off for brunch at The Pantry – a unique concept where we filled out a checklist of the foods we wanted and a breakfast platter was compiled for each of us. And then we were off – across the river and the famed Chain Bridge to explore the castle, the old town and at my request, the Fisherman’s Bastion. 

An afternoon snack saw us riverside with beautiful views of parliament (the prettiest parliament building in the world I think!) and some kick back time (playing a newly learnt and highly addictive card game called carbo) before we basically headed out that evening to see similar sights by night. We had a traditional Hungarian dinner on Vaci Utca, a street that is bustling with restaurants and performers and shops – also conveniently the street we were staying on. 

We arose the next morning for another yummy brunch before making our way to the airport on the extremely cheap airport bus. My second time in Budapest was very brief, but it left an even better impression than the first. The city is growing: both in popularity and also in niceness – it had lost a lot of the grime that I remember from my last visit. Now for some beach time at Malta!