We had a lovely first day in Budapest, where we had visited the castle, hadn’t bought fish and hadn’t tried the cock ball stew. For our second day there, our student’s association had planned to visit two museums. We went with them to the first, a literary museum, but then ditched them to go to the spa…

We started at the Petófi Literary Museum. I studied comparative literature so every trip we had included some literary museum. Petófi was a hungarian poet of whom I had never heard before (and to be honest, completely forgot about again). The museum didn’t give us much information either, since everything was in Hungarian and there weren’t any English translations. If you don’t speak the language, don’t bother visiting this place, it’s a waste of time…

When we came outside again, the sun was shining so we quickly forgot everything we didn’t learn about this poet and decided to have lunch in the sun. Our group wanted to visit the House of Terror, which is a museum devoted to torture practices. Uhm, no thank you? A friend of mine had read about an amazing spa in Budapest, which sounded like a lot more fun. We ditched our group and set afoot!

We went to Széchenyi Spa which was absolutely lovely. There were swimming pools, hot tubs, sauna’s and the place looked absolutely mesmerizing. We spend about two hours here and had an amazing time. It’s an absolute highlight when you’re visiting Budapest!

After the spa, it was time to join our group again for our annual picnick. It’s a thing that we did on these student trips, to find a big square and have dinner there. The student’s association usually made some food and bought veggies, fruit and wine and we would dine on the square. This year we sat down at the Hösök Tere, or Heroes Square, which is one of the major squares of Budapest. I didn’t take any photos, because my camera was still at the hostel (for I left it there when we went to the spa). Anyway, this picnick is tradition and apparently, homeless persons joining us is as well. Earlier we went for a trip to Lisbon and then we had some problems with a hobo stealing our fruit (more on this later, it’s a really funny story). This time, the story is more positive.

A homeless person came to our group, asking for some money. Instead, we gave him a big plate of food and he was incredibly grateful. He wandered off to his friend and they shared the plate together. How sweet that was!

We watched the sun set and had a lot of fun, before going back to our hostel again for a good night’s rest. The next day we would visit some caves and the Fisherman’s Bastion!