August 13

August 13th (sunny and warm)
Although it is a nice gesture to offer free breakfast, it wasn’t exactly anything to write home about. Tomorrow I will grab some of the bread and make French toast and good coffee is very important to us.
We were told that there was no need to purchase bus or tram tickets because they are free to Hungarians and no one else is ever checked. Our first priority was to find a city tour bus because my knee is totally “f_____” from all the walking lately and the hot weather causes it to swell even more.
Budapest was particularly difficult for us today as soon as we arrived into the centre of the city. We could not find a tourist information office anywhere and had to walk what seemed miles to find one. By then, we were hungry so we stopped and had a very average-tasting lunch which cost 7,200. We spent almost two hours just trying to get our bearings about us and decided that Budapest was definitely not one of our favorite cities. As mentioned before, most large cities are just that – large cities. This one was particularly difficult because there are two centres, one in “Buda” and the other, across the Danube, in “Pest”, therefore everything is spread out in a city of 1.8 million people.
We took pictures, thought about taking the open-air city tour bus, the station which we finally located only to find out that George did not have enough cash as they did not take credit cards. So for the next, hour and a half he tried to find a bank machine. Once we found one and got enough cash, we said “enough is enough” and decided there was no reason to pay the $30.ea for the time remaining in the day. We contemplated going in tomorrow, but the experience today just gave us bad vibes.
Needless to say, we were very happy to return to Susi and the quietude in the campground. The city is extremely noisy and George commented that he would go stark-raving crazy in Budapest – sorry to Gsa Gsa.
Today we met the first English-speaking (Australian) long-term travelers who were on a six-month trip as well – and they were our age.