I made myself get an early start this morning, as usually when I'm in the city of Budapest, I get less than 24 hours before I have to turn around and go back or get on a plane to go somewhere.

I started out by going to Keleti station to see if I could get some kind of refund for the tickets I had purchased to Istanbul, as we are now flying. After that short errand was over, I headed over to the Szechenyi baths to really experience the city of spas.

I managed after great difficulty with the language barrier, to acquire a ticket for the baths and a pedicure appointment. The place was like a maze! By the time I had gotten changed, sat in one hot pool for about fifteen minutes and had a brief sauna in an amazing vaulted, tiled room, it was time for my pedicure.

It then took me ages to work out where I was supposed to go for that. I eventually found the pedicure room, which looked more like a medieval torture chamber. It was tiled, with sinks built into the floor. I had to sit in a chair with stirrups and the instruments! I thought I was about to have some kind of complex surgery there were so many scalpels.

The pedicure was very good and actually probably the most painless one I'd ever had. I then went about trying to find the outdoor swimming complex. That doesn't sound hard, I hear you say, think again, I spent twenty minutes in the maze of indoor pools, jaccuzzi's and saunas trying to find out how to get outside. In the end I had to get someone to show me.

What I saw when I got outside was nothing short of amazing. There was a full sized Olympic swimming pool, with two crescent shaped pools at either end. Around the Olympic swimming pool were beautiful Roman type statues and at the end of each crescent there was a statue gushing water. Both crescent pools were actually hot, which was lovely to swim in. one of the crescents had pots that acted as fountains and you could sit under them and get a hot water massage, which was just divine.

After I had my fill of swimming, I went back inside and sat in another one of the thermal pools for a bit. This one was surrounded by red granite columns and looked exactly like an ancient Roman Calidarium, or hot room. I then went and had another go in one of the bizarre vaulted saunas, before having a shower and departing for a nearby castle like structure which I had seen on the way in many times, but still had no idea what it actually was.

Today, did not make this much clearer, all I found out was that it is some kind of museum. It does look spectacular though with its fairy tale turrets and surrounding mote. Inside, ivy grew up all the walls and the little gothic church at the centre just made me feel like I was back in medieval times.

I did think of going to the zoo after the castle, but I was now very hungry and there weren't really any food options up this end of town, so I jumped back on the metro and headed back to Oktagon, where I sat outside TGI Fridays and had fried mozzarella and Jack Daniels steak and Chicken.

After lunch, I went back to the hotel to get in a few hours work on the laptop, before heading back to Keleti station with the group to get on the train to Brasov, Romania. Great, I'm back to blind touring, I thought. At least its only for three days and then I'm back in Istanbul. We got to the station really early and actually sat down for a beer.

Big mistake, out platform as soon as it showed was platform one, which turned out to be right down the other end of the station. I went to scout it out and had to run all the way back to the group and then basically had to make them run for the train.

We finally got onto the train, which was a lot nicer than the crap I have been on lately, and got settled. We spent much of the evening in the dining car chatting to people. I knew the border crossing was at 11pm, but I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, so I thought I would just go lay down for a while. I feel asleep straight away of course and was woken up by the Hungarian border control guards and then again, by the Romanian border control guards, before I passed out again. Woke up about a half hour later needing the bathroom. What a mission it was to get down from that top bunk in a full compartment of people I didn't know, on a moving train on a very unstable ladder. The bunks in these trains are six, three on each side, so to get down from the top one, you have to be some kind of contortionist acrobat monkey. Luckily, I can pull of contortionist acrobat monkey these days. I made my trip to the bathroom and went back to bed and didn't wake up until morning.