Day 7: Buda + Pest

On Thursday the 15th, we had to get up at 4am to drive 1.5hrs to Charleroi airport for our flight to Budapest. On our flight we met a Hungarian girl who works in Brussels who was flying home for the weekend and she gave us a bunch of tips for while we were in Budapest.

Check out the clouds as we flew across Germany!

When we arrived in Budapest, we had a ride organised with our hotel for them to pick us up but there was no man with a sign. After originally thinking maybe he was late, we realised our flight had arrived at the wrong terminal so we lugged our stuff to the other terminal to see if our driver was there. He wasn't :( After continuously searching new name cards, we decided to bite the bullet and turn our phones on and call the hotel. You may think we should have done it earlier but we just thought he would turn up after a while and we really didn't want to get charged for international phone calls. Anyway, after a couple of calls back and forth with the hotel, our driver arrived and an hour after landing, we were on our way to the hotel.

Our hotel is amazing. It's called Bohem Art Hotel and the interior is awesome. Sarah and I now know we can't go back to staying in hostels. Haha. It is situated one street from the Danube River and one street in the other direction from the main shopping street. If you can't tell from the photos below, the entire hotel features artwork from Hungarian artists.

 Our room at Bohem Art Hotel

Our room at Bohem Art Hotel

 You can't tell from this angle but there is a bar in the middle of the back wall.

 One of the foyer walls

We spent the afternoon shopping along the Vaci Utca and I got a bit disconcerted by the fact the sun goes down at 4:30pm. It feels like 9pm and it has been a bit hard to get used to. It'll be worse in Stockholm.

For dinner we found an Italian restaurant that also had a mini Hungarian menu. Don't get annoyed at us for choosing Italian. It's difficult to judge a restaurant as we are in a touristy area and most want to rip us off. The restaurant appealed to us because the menu and prices were amazing plus a lot of Hungarian food is meat based (Sarah is vegetarian) or has capsicum in it (I hate capsicum). Anyway, turns out we picked the right place because the food was so fresh and delicious and alot of locals were eating there. Our waiter was a really funny guy and to even out the food, we ordered Hungarian deserts. It was a good balance of trying something new and being happy with what we were eating. The best part, for 4 drinks, 2 mains and 2 deserts, it only cost us $20 each. Bargain!

The interior of La Botte

Our Hungarian deserts! I had Apricot Cream "Kecsskemet" Style, whatever that means, and Sarah had a Cottage Cheese Pancake with Hot Raspberry Sauce. Both were delicious :)