We took a Bolt (not messing around with Uber again! plus Bolt allowed me to pre-book an XL vehicle, a Renault Espace, no less) to the main station for the 1005 to Budapest. There’s a coffee shop called Minit on platform 1, hidden behind a block of left luggage lockers.
On the train now, which is decent, except for:
- air con is crap or broken – we are all melting
- no free refreshments except a bottle of water in 1st class – and that wasn’t cold (too hot for coffees though!)
- the train stopped between stations, the conductor said “this is an unexpected stop, don’t get off”…but someone had got off and was walking along the track with a bag. Was this a special stop for a member of staff who’d clocked off, changed out of uniform and was going home nearby?
We reached Budapest about half an hour late, but got through Nyugati station very easily. Travelling around Budapest has been a breeze so far because of a) Citymapper and b) carnets. Go to vending machine, tap UK flag, select carnet of 10 tickets, hand them out as required, repeat as necessary. There is an app you can use too, but it’s fiddly and of course only designed for a single user – in-laws and kids find it MUCH easier to validate (stick in little machine to add usage timestamp) and hold on to a physical ticket.
Budapest’s metro is great, frequent, on-time, a bit quirky (closed carriages on line 1). They have ticket inspectors at most stations, so definitely having a ticket in some form is essential!
Our hostel, the Meininger Great Hall, is great. Very friendly, not hectic, and the rooms were already ready! A quick pitstop after the hot train ride and we were ready for Szechenyi Thermal Baths.
The Baths got off to a bad start. We got inside, changed…then where? All signs to the outdoor baths pointed to a sealed-off door. Eventually, we found our way out. We’d been in the pool 15 minutes when…a lightning flash in the distance, and rumble of thunder moments later. I start looking around for massive lightning conductors assuming they’ll have this sort of thing covered…when I hear a whistle blown! Some people start to move although many look around blankly. I shout at the family to get OUT. No further lightning is seen and after 20 minutes or so, the sky has cleared up enough to get back in.
The kids go around the whirlpool thing probably a hundred times. G is happy but exhausted – we just about manage to get some pizza in her before bedtime!
Timsformational 