Every country we go to makes it much harder to pick my favourite stop… the whole of this continent is incredible… Today I am writing from Hungary… seriously… did I just type that?   Hungary… who would have thought? Hungary… well Budapest in particular has once again blown my expectations out the water… last night we climbed to the top of ‘Buda’ and looked out over beautiful ‘Pest’ and then enjoyed the incredible thermal pools that our hotel… which was pretty flippin awesome before we found this out… was built on. Seriously is there anything better than sitting in a 40°C thermal pool surrounded by snow? Probably not… especially considering it crosses no. 47 off the list. We also got to check out the local Hungarian cuisine and the local nightlife at possibly the most random building I have ever been in, an abandoned communist building converted into a night club, fitted with the most eclectic collection of art… memorabilia… nostalgic… random things.

But I think the highlight of Budapest has to have been today… After traveling with 48 other people for 10 days sometimes it’s nice to just hang out with your favourite person… alone… so today Dave and I explored everything we could possibly find in Budapest… The Castle, St Matthias’ Church, St Stephen’s Church (This was runner up to highlight… it has a dead guys preserved hand… in a little cabinet… on display… that often participates in parades… so very good!), the Parliament building, the shoes along on the Danube – an incredibly moving memorial to the Jewish people who were murdered there in WWII, the ‘House of Terror’, Hero’s Square, a pretty incredible Ice skating rink, an enchanting castle in the park (yep… no. 75 is now off the list too), the market place, a ride on the worlds first underground rail system, a beautiful dinner by the river looking over to our incredible hotel and then finishing the day by sneaking into the rock church behind a local and just pretending we knew what we were doing… all in very very very cold weather… sunny, but freezing… like -6°C freezing…

It has been so incredible to see so many amazing places, but even more special to be seeing them all with Davo… I couldn’t have picked a better travel buddy… and we aren’t even halfway yet!