Budapest

After a gentle rise the next morning, it was only a short 25 mile ride into Budapest. As expected, I got well and truly lost on the way in, but eventually found the street of the friend with whom I was staying, right in the centre, in the VI district. I parked the bike safely in a garage, where it was to stay for the week. Using bikes to get around in big cities that you don't know tends to mean a lot of getting lost and you don't get to see as much, so I went for the 'on-foot' option.
Budapest is essentially divided into two halves - Buda and Pest, with Buda being the hilly and green Western section and Pest being the Eastern city centre.
My first visit was in Buda to an area called Var. This was a series of castles and traditional architecture buildings on the top of a hill and in additional to being beautiful and peaceful in itself, offered a superb view over Pest and the impressive Parliament buildings. After wandering around this area, I descended the hill and walked across the Danube River via the Chain Bridge to the Pest side.
On the Pest side, I visited a number of museums, with the most interesting being the Ethnographic Museum (folk) and the Museums of Terror. I also was shown around the Parliament buildings, both inside and out. These are truly impressive. The Central Synagogue in the VII district (Jewish) was fascinating, both for the buildings themselves and for their history. In the gardens to the synagogue was a metal tree sculpture, with each leaf on the tree bearing the name of a lost life from during the Holocaust.
The final area to be visited was the XIV district (Varosliget), where there was a peaceful, shady park, the Hosoktere square and monument and the Szechenyi Baths (some local and very popular natural spa baths).
Budapest was a very easy place to get around as you can pretty much walk everywhere on foot. The people are pretty friendly (the girls are stunning) and it is pretty developed, so there are plenty of restaurants of shops to buy anything.
After a brief weekend visit back to London for a wedding, I was ready to press on and to continue the journey into further flung parts of the world.