The morning was civilised. Once we were up, our breakfast was served to us: nice coffee but some disgusting packs of sandwiches which we did not even think of opening. We drank the coffee gratefully but with some supermarket fruit tarts we had picked up at Munich station along with a huge bottle of very welcome water.
Our first views of Hungary, from the train, were of a rather flat country with lots of dilapidation and much industrial building. The station has an air of adventure to it with the names of distant cities up on the departure board, unlike the UK of course.

It was raining outside so we explored the tourists guidance and metro station downstairs, all reassuringly efficient, helpful and very recently built. The office sells 24hour passes for the whole transport system including trams and riverboats, so we jumped on a metro to the town centre, then on the number 2 tram down by the river and finally a riverboat back up to a stop not very far from our hotel, the Lanchid Design hotel, just down from the Lanchid bridge and on the Buda side of the river. (Links to all these to follow).
Even though we arrived at the hotel about 10.30am, our room was ready, which was such welcome news. The hotel was just right, modern, welcoming and helpful and our room had the premium view of the river and the historic bridge with a whole wall of window. I remember lying on the bed and starting to eat some raisins thrown in my bag from Tesco a few days ago and falling asleep while chewing them.
Here’s the view from our room:

One nice thing about Budapest is the simplicity of the city’s public transport where a one-day ticket allows you to travel on busses, metro, trams and riverboat. We spent a lot of time buzzing around.
the guide book suggested two things to investigate in our couple of days there: the Jewish museum and synagogue and ‘ruin pubs’. The former turned out the more authentic of the two. The ruin pubs seemed, at least the one we visited a rather tired parody but the guides around the Jewish sites were committed to explaining jewish life, firstly a young man explaining the synagogue building to us and how it was deliberately built to have the familiarity of a Christian church, and the seventy-something year old showing us around the museum exhibits. He explained that he was five when Hungarian jews were being taken off to concentration camps.
We went to a ruin pub for something to eat. The setting was amazing, a covered in courtyard between two buildings with a gravel floor and high high ceiling. However the food that promised a middle eastern fusion was really disappointing.