Day 3. Inside The Hungarian Parliament

January 6th 2020

We may have walked loads and loads but our final day was not going to slow down. We still had things to see before we make our extravagant exit… on a plane, like most people.

Someday I will have my private jet! 😂

We woke up around 8am and got prepared to head out and explore some more. We started with some sculptures nearby. These are the Boys of the Pals street. The information plaque was in Hungarian, so no use to us, but it seems like the boys were playing marbles.


Lauren’s feet seemed to be feeling the after effects of the past few days, as she had a slight limp in her walk. I was blaming myself – maybe I made her walk a bit too much? I was just a bit worried about using public transport, my feet I could trust.

Noticing this though, I decided we should use the tram more. It is basically just a straight line up and down the pier. What can go wrong?

Before doing so, I made her walk an extra 40 minutes to see the Shoes of the Danube River!

These shoes are there to commemorate the Budapestian (is that a word?) Jews that got killed by the Nazi’s in WW2 because of the religion they believed in.

Going to Auschwitz last year, I knew this was going to be quite the eerie and disturbing experience. I hate thinking about death, even more so: millions of deaths.

We paid our respects and moved on.


After this, we glanced at the breathtaking Hungarian Parliament. In my opinion, it is the best building in Budapest; and there is a lot of astounding buildings in Budapest.

It was full-on with security, so we played it carefully, just in case they misunderstood me as a threat or something. We found the visitor entrance and went down.

You can only enter the Parliament building if you go on a guided tour – I pre-booked this, as I’ve heard it sells it quickly. Everyone can see the outside – but the inside is a mystery to some.

Even though it wasn’t as beautiful as its exterior, the inside was pretty epic. The ceiling was made out of pure karat gold and the rooms had a whole load of finesse.

We saw the Hungarian Crown Jewel’s, the guards do their changeover and lots of rooms, including the House of Commons. One of the best things on this trip.

Monday’s in most European cities are the worst to plan for. Most museums are closed which definitely limits what we can do to fill in for time. We took the tram to Chain Bridge and from there crossed over to Buda for a spontaneous trip to Buda Tower.

We saw this on the day before’s blog, but couldn’t enter because it closed at 4PM. We bought our Budapest card for the reason of entering historical facilities, so we made the climb. It was 178 steps of spiral to the top. With stop offs for information.

I read it because my Hungarian history knowledge is quite poor. I learnt a lot about the war with Turks (where the rest of the building was destroyed and funds were too poor to rebuild). So all that remained was St. Mary Magdelene’s bell tower.

After a tiring climb to the top, we took in the astonishing landscape of the city while listening to the 3pm ding of the bells. Which was a tune!


Due to having to wake up really early the next day for our flight and our Daunbe River Cruise being at 6.30pm, grabbed lunch beforehand – heading to Trattoria Pomo D’oro, for some pizza.

This restaurant looked really fancy but prices were decent. I had a spicy salami pizza which was a mouth-watering delight. My first pizza of 2020, can you believe I went so long?

Here’s an awkward moment for you: when I went in search of the toilet – which was downstairs – I accidentally walked over to automatic doors, which led to the kitchen. All the staff looked at me, it was quite embarrassing.

The price of our total meals and drinks, was about £21 in our currency, so cheap but fancy.


Sitting down for so long meant my legs went into sleep mode. We took the tram two stops, just so we could be closer to our next place: Molnar’s Cafe. This was so I could try the Hungarian pudding: Chimney Cake.

No idea how I lasted so long without having one, the smell made me lick my lips and stand still so I could allow the smell to be vacuumed up my nostrils.

I had a vanilla one with ice cream, topped with strawberry sauce. It was delicious. The cake was tough to slice, so I had to begin using my hands to eat. It was because it was basically a curly doughnut layered with flavour and love.

I demand that you do not leave this country without trying it at least once!


The Danube River Cruise was relaxing and allowed us to see the sights from the water. Lauren pointed out we have seen the city from Buda, we have seen the city from Pest but we haven’t seen the city from the middle.

We had a headset on to listen to a guide; told by a voiceover pretending to be Budapest. There was plenty of languages on this headset and even cultural music if you listen before the guide begins.

We got a complete tour of the city which was like a summary of everything we have seen on our city break.

Poshly, we took champagne as our drink of choice to wrap up our holiday like me outside wrapped in the -5°C weather. Cheers to that!


After this, we got on the tram one more time to decrease the journey back to the hotel; I now wish we used the tram on the first day to hide from the horrendous rainstorm.

Back at the hotel, we packed and got ready for bed as we had to be up early in the morning.

Thanks for joining me on this trip. We have one more blog, were we will say our final goodbyes, head home and I will summarise my experience on this travel. See you all shortly!