Starting the day with a visit to the ruins of Aquincum, the Roman border settlement and origin of Budapest, and ending it on the Ister train, which is the Latin name for the Danube, part of the northern border of the Roman empire. It was a very Roman border themed day!
Check-out day usually means breakfast in the hotel, to save precious packing time.
Once that was done, I discovered the suburban rail network to get to Aquincumi Múzeum & Archaeological Park. Apparently there is a two hour walking trail that takes you to even more Roman remains, but I stuck to the main archaeological park and the nearby amphitheater this time. The park could use some TLC, but it was a nice discovery nevertheless.
Back in the centre of Budapest, I resumed my mission: eat Hungarian specialties! There was one that I found out about when I first planned a Budapest trip in 2020, and it sounded so tasty, I actually looked up a recipe and I’ve made it myself quite often: rakott krumpli. But until today, I never actually tasted the original! At GRUMPY I was finally able to try that dish, and also some sweet Túrógombóc as dessert.
After that late lunch I had just enough time to visit Tamp & Pull, one of the oldest specialty coffee bars in Budapest, and Constellation, a taproom and restaurant for both Gravity—whose brewery I visited on the second day—and Brew Your Mind.
By then it was really time to get ready for my train. Since every train trip is better with a nice beer, I stopped by at Beerselection to get one, but it had slipped my mind that this beer shop had some beers on draught as well. It would have been rude to not try some, wouldn’t it?
After picking up my bag at the hotel, I headed to the Budapest Keleti business lounge, to charge my phone a bit—you never know if the power on the train is working—and eat a bit, although I hadn’t quite digested my large, late lunch yet.
Time to find out if I have better luck with this Romanian CFR Călători sleeper than I had with my Hungarian one! Turns out I had: the one and only sleeper car was open and functional—running water and electricity present—and I think this is the roomiest room I ever had on a train.
On my way to Bucureşti Nord!
