Budapest marked a serious of firsts. The first month of our journey completed, the first things have started breaking, the first country we visited that neither of us have been to before, the first time we didn’t book accommodation in advance and nearly ended up on the icy street when we arrived on the bus at 11pm. But all ended well and at 1am we were sound asleep in a private room in Bongo Hostel in the centre of Budapest. We started off our first day with a trip to the Széchenyi thermal baths. Europe’s largest natural hot spring and medicinal baths. Tom enjoyed the saunas and jumping in the freezing cold pools after, whereas Anja preferred to soak in the hot outdoor and indoor pools. For both of us the highlight however was a private beer bath spar, with a mixture of hops, yeast and salts in a wooden hot tub and a beer tap next to it with as much beer as we wanted to pour for ourselves. After the baths we visited the Buja Disnók Market and had a schnitzel at lush pigs that was easily twice the size of my head! In the evening we had a drink in a ruin bar around the corner called Szimpla Kert, which was a great and colourful experience with its varying levels of artistic bars. The next day we went for a long walk and visited Buda Castle. In the evening we went for dinner by the Danube Riverside in the Esetleg Bisztró and had some very tasty traditional Hungarian stew, followed by some incredible gin and tonics at Kiosk. After which we decided to catch the bus up to Matthias church where the famous Austrian emperors Franz and Sissi were married (this probably only means a lot to Anja and her family who watched the movies countless times)! The church itself is absolutely beautiful though and the view from the hill that it stands on is breathtaking by night. We couldn’t get enough of it and decided to walk down to take it all in, despite the cold. And some very cheap but tasty pizza found on the way home warmed us both up again. Thank you so much to Tom’s friend Peter for all the amazing recommendations of where to go, eat and drink in Budapest. Every single one of them was top notch and made it a lot easier to see this huge city in such a short space!