Week 23 (Budapest): bench building

This week we got stuck into building a new bench outside for Zita and Arpi. The metal frame for the existing bench was in good condition, we just needed to remove the old wooden planks, measure and cut new ones, and then bolt them into place. Just! We quickly found out that several of the old bolts were seized in place. As we were limited tool wise to just a spanner, getting these off took a lot of elbow grease, grunting (and probably swearing), and WD40. A few hours later than anticipated we had removed all the bolts and could get stuck into rebuilding the bench. We measured up the new planks, cut them to size with a tenon saw (which are reinforced to increase precision) and then drilled holes for the bolts to go back in. Craig always encourages me to get involved with these DIY projects, so the list of power tools I can use is rapidly growing! The trickiest bit of rebuilding the bench was joining the pieces of the angled back rest in the corner- but we got there eventually.



Overall, the bench project took a bit longer than we anticipated, by the time we had bought the wood, got the bolts out, worked out all the angles etc, so the job kept us occupied for our entire week in Budapest! We just finished in time to sit and admire our work before we left Hungary! Sadly we had to disassemble the whole thing again and store it away. Zita and Arpi will coat the bench in some protectant and paint it before assembling it again. Hopefully they can send some pictures our way when it is finished!


In our spare time this week we headed back over the river up to Budapest Palace and through Castle District. The views over Budapest from the castle were fantastic.



From here we wandered along through Castle District, a quaint oldy-worldy part of Budapest with cobbled streets. As beautiful as it was we both got a slightly odd vibe from Castle District. I think the number of tourists around, and the cafes and restaurants catering for them gave the area a slightly "put-on" feel. Nevertheless, the area was lovely to walk through, but we opted to keep walking and stop for a drink somewhere quieter.

We really enjoyed our time back in Budapest, Zita and Arpi let us get stuck into some really fun projects, and we got to see a few more areas of Budapest that we didn't see with my parents. On top of that we got to stay with some very seasoned travellers and hear great stories of their trip and pick up some tips for our future travels. Listening to them talk definitely makes me want to go out and buy bikes and set off into the sunset for a few years!

On Sunday we flew out of Budapest to Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro. We both wanted to visit Montenegro from the start of our trip, so we were really excited to be ending our trip here. We picked up our first passport stamp of the trip as Montenegro isn't in the EU yet. We had one night in Podgorica (pronounced pod-gor-its-a) before getting the bus to new hosts in Sutomore (pronounced sut-o-mor-rah), a coastal town, on Monday.

Podgorica has a very different feel to the other cities we have visited along our journey. The city is one of the smallest capital cities in Europe, and when I looked up the population I think it was somewhere between Carlisle and Newcastle. After arriving on Sunday we went in search of dinner. We ran into a slight translation issue- very few places has an English menu and Montenegrin isn't on google translate. We tried translating from other similar languages but were still left confused in some places. For example one section of the food menu in one bar was titled "pivski meni", googling this phrase drew a blank and translating from Croatian gave us "Beer me". So who knows!

Eventually we settled for Gyros. Straight away it was obvious that this was one of the cheapest places we visited in terms of food. Drinks were similar to other places we have visited at €3-4 for a pint, but the food was ridiculously cheap. We got two XL gyros and two 0.5L beers for €10. And it was amazing!

The next day we walked around Podgorica for a couple of hours, taking in the relatively few sights, before hopping on a short bus down to the Montenegrin Coast. Charles, our new host met us off the bus and drove us up the hill to their house in Sutomore. Charles is English but moved to Montenegro 14 years ago after meeting his Montenegrin wife, Tamara, in the UK. They have twin 18-month year olds, Sally and Stuart. They were so lovely from the moment we met them. We felt right at home! We have actually been in contact with Charles and Tamara since May as we were initially planning to visit in July. However, Charles and Tamara were travelling themselves then we rescheduled for September as they sounded like great hosts and we really felt that staying with them would be a lot of fun!

We were shown up to our bedroom and were pleasantly surprised to find it had a balcony looking out over the sea- totally amazing! I have a feeling the next 3 weeks in Montenegro are going to be good!

Total joint spend: €2724