As it was all planned on Thursday we knew exactly what we were doing: first, the Heroes Square, then onto stop 13 for the Fisherman’s Bastion, a wine-tasting at Faust’s Wine Bar, a walk to the Palace and the “Fenicular” down the hill towards the chain bridge. If there was time, we were going to take a cruise to Margaret Isle in the middle of the river, then collapse appreciatively into bed at the end of a long day. But you know what they say of the plans of mice and men…

Reboarding the bus at Heroes Square gave us the opportunity to meet the one person in Budapest who wasn’t a nice as punch to us: Ms Ticket Inspector. Seriously, come on — we’re tourists, like we knew the tickets were “expired”! We ran for the bus, for chrissake! Luckily (for us, not her) she let us on anyway and we headed back to Buda — only to find that our chosen route, already disturbed by the flooding of the Danube, was now completely “Pete Tong”! An accident, perhaps, had closed off the main mountain road and somehow achieved the impossible: making Budapest’s traffic even worse.

With the road to Stop 13 blocked off by police, the bus had no choice but to detour from Stop 12 directly to 14 — miles from the Fisherman’s Bastion, and at the bottom of the hill to boot. “I like that we’ve been on this tour enough times that we know this is a massive detour,” commented Andy, and we all nodded resignedly — we just about could’ve given the audio tour ourselves (“You can see from the lack of greenery in this area that we are, all together now, still down town!”) A look over the map and some hard decisions: we would alight on the other side of the bridge, in Pest, then walk back over and take the Fenicular up the hill. The rest of the plan fell into place.

The scale of things is just crazy here: I keep imagining just how much money and effort has gone into building the massive palatial buildings and soaring monuments. Money which — nowadays — Budapest doesn’t have; it hasn’t quite recovered from the two world wars, although it is certainly doing well now. I think we’ll have to come back in a couple of years (maybe a decade) and see how she’s gettin’ on…

The fenicular was fun — two cable cars, really, on the same cable. I muse with the idea of using the weight of the tourists at the top to drag those at the bottom up via a pulley system, but realise that the system only works if there are more tourists at the top than at the bottom — unlikely at best. We look for the infamous wine bar, and even find it, but are dismayed to find it not only closed, but locked! Shut down permanently?!

Sometime during the day we find an archery practise range (well, a tourist-ified range, at least) and spend a couple of euro (ha ha! They take euro coins!) shooting arrows into a nearby target — or the ground, a tree, a passing tourist. After a bad start I get all “Robin Hood” and land one in the bullseye … which would be impressive if we weren’t only a few feet away from the covered hay-bale targets!

Tomorrow is our last day, and we’ll take our leave from Andy — he goes back to London, we go onto Poland. Time is absolutely flying by!

On our second day in Budapest, and on Dayna’s sage advice, we bought tickets for the big red “hop on, hop off” tour bus. It was 12:30 and too hot to be walking about by the time we boarded, and so we did a full circuit — through Pest, along Andrassy Utca to the Heroes Square, then back and across the river to the “old town” of Buda and our first glimpse of that half of the city. An icecream at the Citadella gave us the opportunity for some amazing panoramic views from the hill (I’ve taken photos and will attempt to stitch them together with some software). It also gave us a chance to plan what we would do on Thursday — the palace, Fisherman’s Bastion, Citadella and the medieval township itself.

The interesting bit actually started when we went looking for a late snack, although we didn’t realise it at the time. Wandering around Pest we found a place called the “SMS Cafe” — innocent enough from the outside, with a cool looking dragon logo and cheap Hungarian beer (yes, sensing a theme?). But once inside we noticed little details: the heavy black drapes, impressive bar, skeletons on the door to the toilet, the other customers … this was a gothic night-club! Tamed by the day, sure, just a cool, dark place for the Creatures of the Night to have a coffee and smoke skinny foreign cigarettes — but in our backpacker costume of cargo shorts, sweaty t-shirts and floppy hats, we couldn’t have looked more out of place. No wonder our smiling, well-pierced bar-tender was grinning as she served us Dreher and mineral water … she was hoping we’d stay ’til dusk turned to night, and the feasting would begin!

(Actually, she WAS really nice, just like almost everyone we met in Budapest. In fact, the only mean person was a disgruntled, middle-aged ticket woman on the tour bus who wanted us to know our 24 hour tickets had expired — they were valid from purchase time (10:30am) not time of first boarding (12:30am)!! Which we actually asked about when we bought the tickets — “all day tomorrow is fine” — but as she let us board anyway we let it slide.)

After a little more wandering, dinner at a (fairly non-descript) restaurant. We joked about the goth place — I’d wanted to go to a Goth club in London with Dayna sometime, fully “cyberdogged” — and suggested that when Andy visits Australia (on his way to, or from, New Zealand for the world cup) we should all go “goth/emo/cyber” in a club in Sydney. “Yeah, me as a Goth,” quipped Andy sarcastically, “I can really see it.”

“I don’t know, man,” I replied, “Pale skin, white hair — dress you all in black and I think you’ll look awesome!”

“Or all in white,” Dee suggested. “You could be a kind of anti-Goth.”

“They’ll probably make you their king,” I mused.

“Beating the ladies off with a stick,” added Dee.

“Not sure you want THOSE kinds of girls … or maybe you do?” And so on; the teasing was remorseless, but Andy gives as good as he gets and we were all laughing as we walked along the streets in search of a local bar like that we’d discovered yesterday.

Which is probably why, when we saw Cafe M, we didn’t notice some of the telling signs that we should have. We went in and the over-enthusiastic bartender had us come sit at the bar — despite the rest of the (admittedly tiny) place being quite empty. He chatted non-stop, played a weird mix of classical opera and too-loud pop-electronica and generally just fussed about behind the little bar. “You want to see some video?” he asked, and we turned around to the wall-mounted flat-screen in time to see the full name of the bar — “Cafe Mystery – Gay Bar”, in rainbow-coloured letters — disappear and be replaced with a movie where half-naked football players covered themselves with balls. “You want leaflets?” he continued, distributing the local gay magazine to us and two Americans who had just arrived.

So we finished our drinks with some amusement, and decided to go somewhere a little less “hetrophobic” (just kidding!). The music was too loud to really explain, “Oh, we didn’t know it was a gay bar. Oops,” or get into conversation with the American couple, so we smiled and waved goodbye instead (“Do you think we scared them away?” asked one of the men). Both Dee and I have been in gay bars before — she used to frequent one in Brisbane when she lived there, and I’ve even been chatted up in Manchester — but Andy hadn’t so it was time for more teasing.

For our second, and final, drink we tried to be a bit more careful, and picked a place where a tourist family sat with their kids on a table out front. More teasing: “I don’t know, look — there’s two men there, two women sitting there, it might be a gay bar too! Our waiter is slim, with very well-groomed hair!” We sat and laughed and tried a fruit cocktail, then just sat back and watched the world go by for a while. “Seriously,” whispered Dee when Andy was away to the toilet for a moment, “This actually might be an ‘alternative lifestyle’ type bar. Don’t tell Andy, okay?”

I headed in to use the same facilities, and on my way back out passed a large man in drag, with curly blonde wig and immaculate makeup. I grinned — the more diverse the culture, the better as far as I’m concerned — and was about to tell the others when a stretch limo arrived and five young transvestites sashayed inside, negating the need altogether. “Must be a show on!” exclaimed Dee, but we agreed we were all just too tired to try to get tickets. “Okay, let’s hope Bangkok is safe by the time we get to Thailand,” Dee relented. “I’ve always wanted to see the Lady Boys show.”

With that glamorous end to our evening, and a good story to tell here on the journal (and, for Andy, on the next football trip), we headed off to our respective hostels/hotels and promptly fell asleep, the theme from “Priscilla” playing in our minds…

We arrived at a hot — and flooded! — Budapest on Tuesday afternoon. After a little to-and-fro’ing to get some Hungarian forints to spend, we boarded a local bus and headed for our hostel: Maverick, an old but beautiful building in Fereciek Tere, Pest.

It’s a cool hostel, with manga playing on the screen in reception and Tarantino movie posters lining the walls. For the princely sum of 48,200 Ft (162€) we get the high-ceilinged “Vincent Room” on the Pulp Fiction-themed top floor, complete with a little kitchenette (shared by Mia, Jules and Honey Bunny), private bathroom and free wifi. We settle in, unpack a little, then go down in the rickety elevator to wait for Andy.

When he arrives (delayed by traffic, which has gone mental since the banks of the Danube flooded onto the nearby roads and walkways) we get lunch/dinner at an amazing little restaurant: ornate painted ceilings and walls, gilded fittings, big carved seats and embroidered cushions. The food is divine, our waiter is exceedingly nice and the price is right — this is a much more “posh” restaurant than we’d usually visit, but because of the time of day they are running a kind of “get you in for lunch” special, which immediately reminds me of London’s “crunch lunch” epidemic of a few months ago.

After lunch we settle into the pattern that will define our next three days here: a lot of walking around followed by a retreat to a cool pub/bar/restaurant to wait out the afternoon sun (37 degrees yesterday, yuk). With half the day already gone, we decide to explore the Pest side of the Danube, and are quickly overwhelmed with the glorious architecture (and ever-present decay-renewal cycle).

Eyeballs raw with wonderment, we head into the back-streets and alleyways behind the “tourist zone” in search of a bar we’d heard about from the Internet/travel guides/random strangers (I’m not sure which). It’s a mission to find, as reading Hungarian maps isn’t always the easiest — there is a Vaci Ut, a Vaci U and probably a Vaci Utca: all different streets, and all in entirely different areas of the city — but suddenly I notice a sign and point our way to a dodgy looking little gate in a brick fence. We push through in trepidation…

… and it’s an awesome little local bar! Cheap Hungarian “Dreher” and “Dreher Bok” (dark), a cool garden and sandy floors between our aching toes — shoes and sandals having been kicked off aching feet almost immediately upon arrival. We drink, laugh, talk. It is our first time in Hungary — Andy’s too — and we’re getting a feel for the city … and liking it! Sometime during the night it is Dee’s round, and she inadvertently picks not a beer but a shot (!!) of “Unicum”, a harsh liquor with a hint of liquorice and a wallop like a Clydesdale.

We decide it is time to go home, and so collect our shoes and stumble back to the hostel. It is almost midnight!