Day Ten - Budapest

Up too early and my head lets me know about it. We have been asked (I think) by our hostess to vacate the room by 10am so we head into town to buy breakfast. Today will be one of those transition days, fun in parts but difficult to escape the amount of travel that needs doing.

Before we eat fruit and yoghurt and the ubiquitous cheese, bread and sausage, I take Claire to a building I had read about a while ago.

It's Eger's 17th century minaret, and supposed to be the northernmost remnant today of the Ottoman Empire and its architecture. At 40 metres high it's not exactly a leviathan of Eastern European architecture, but its 97 stairs are crammed so tightly into a miniscule spiral staircase that it makes climbing the thing pretty frightening.

I've never considered myself a vertigo or claustrophobia sufferer, but this ascent go my chest tight and my palms clammy. The views were worth it though, once I'd stopped feeling dizzy.

We wandered round Budapest for a while or, more specifically, Buda, the Roman side of the city to the west of the gushing Danube. It's comfortably twice as wide as the Thames in London, so wide in fact that the Roman's didn't even attempt to cross it. Buda was therefore the Easternmost point of their empire.

Castle hill offers breathtaking panoramas across the flatter land of Pest and, gazing down onto the clogged streets, busy river and majestic steeples and spires, the city bares a good resemblance to London.

Budapest, once the centre of Europe during the heady Austro-Hungarian days and the capital of a far larger landmass, still retains much of its grandeur and swagger. Some of its buildings are easily as impressive as you'd find in Milan or Paris. It is certainly a place I would like to dedicate more time to in the future. It has the pleasing air of a city that, although having falling wildly from its zenith of power and position, still thinks of itself as great.

As we walk to our last traditional Hungarian restaurant the heavens open once again and the noise of the rain hammering on the glass roof of Kelenti station is haunting.

We return, my belly full of the largest plate of fried potatoes ever constructed, to the station and wait for the 23:25 overnight Eurocity Express to Bucharest. 'Express' not being the operative word.