During the night, all but Liliya, were woken up by the loudest thunder I've ever heard. It was insane and meant I was quite tired in the morning from broken sleep again and we had to actually set an alarm since we were booked to go to Parliament.
We decided to drive into the centre as we also wanted to go to some baths and didn't want to carry all our swim stuff. It was surprisingly quiet on the roads and plenty of parking, not what I would expect for a capital city.
I booked the parliament tour months ago which was ideal firstly because it's more expensive on the day and secondly they didn't have any English tours left. There were plenty of non native English speakers on our tour so I think it's the default tour if they don't provide one in a native language or its a better time. It's 45 minutes which again was the perfect balance between being interesting enough without the kids getting bored. Liliya was interested because they hold the coronation crown (which you aren't allowed to take an up close photo of hence the blurry picture).
Following the tour we were close to the shoes on the danube memorial so took a moment to take in the horrors of the past. I was doing OK until Al pointed out the child sized shoes 😢
Back to the van for a quick picnic lunch then we drove on to the island in the river between Bupa and Pest. We wanted to go to some baths whilst we were here but many of the fancy ones either don't allow children or only have hot pools and are more for relaxing rather than playing.
The island has a couple of churches, open air museum, gardens and a musical fountain. Sadly we weren't around at the right time to see the fountain but we did walk through the Japanese garden and the kids spotted a turtle.
The palinatus baths are the oldest outdoor baths in Hungary and when they were built in 1919 they were also the largest in Europe. They were split into different areas with different pools being different temperatures. Handily they had some at 36°c next to the kids pool at 32°c so Al and I could sit and relax and still watch the kids in the splash pool.
One thing that really surprised us was how empty it was. This is the first Saturday in August, back in the UK you wouldn't be able to move whereas here many of the food outlets and bars weren't even open. I managed to find an open cocktail terrace to partake in a Strawberry colada and asked the barman why it was so empty. He explained that now it's quite expensive for the locals to visit both to enter the baths and to drive or get the bus onto the island and therefore they only come if the weather is guaranteed to be good all day.
We spent a couple of hours there and as it happened as we were walking back to the van it did start raining but at least it worked out well for us.
Were staying in Hungary for another night near Szeged which is the third largest city in Hungary.
Again it was chosen as a mid way point between Budapest and Belgrade but I did find a water park so tomorrow will be another fun chill out day. Many of the pools are outdoors though and whilst driving on the motorway we've seen several flashes of lightening so I'm not sure I'll be making use of the sun loungers and getting to do my puzzler 😜
As the sat nav says we're almost at our spot for the night it's feeling rather remote and as Robert puts it something like out of a horror movie (he's never watched one I would just like to add). I have to agree with him, the road abruptly comes to an end and to my complete surprise there is actually already another van here!
Its still chucking it down so no chance of eating outdoors and our trusty camping staple of corned beef hash (with the illegal non EU meat) is consumed.
While Al is cooking Robert and I take a quick explore and find this is actually a bird watching spot and there is a lookout over a lake. If we get a chance we may get out the binoculars after breakfast and see if we can spot any.
