Today we had a full day sightseeing around Budapest on our bicycles. Kris had a challenge to find our way out of Ujpest to the central city on bike paths.

I really enjoyed the entry to the city from the North, via the island in the middle of the Danube (Margaret Island). In the morning there were lots of joggers. In the late afternoon when we left the island was full of families with small children and lots of people lying tanning in the sun. The island is a huge park which includes the ruins of a mediaval cloister, cafes, swimming baths, musical fountains and a small zoo.

    

 

For our sightseeing around the city we picked up a map advertising a hop on – hop off tourist bus route and followed that route with our bikes – as it picks up on all the main sights.

Budapest is large, cosmopolitan and has a surfeit of fantastical old buildings. We were glad to have our bicycles as it is spread over a large area. There is a large bicycle hire infrastructure in Budapest with many distributed lock in points. There is also many shopping areas with lots of posh shops. There are a number of bridges crossing the Danube and we managed to cross at each one of them.

                  

 

                  

It was a hot day, so we were happy to find a craft beer pub, on the river front in an ultra modern shopping centre on the river front. The local brew was good. I see they also sell bottled BrewDog (Irish craft beer which we also get in Wellington pubs).