I was awake before 07:00, but we didn’t need to be on our way to the meeting point for today’s tour until 08:45. I didn’t plan on running today either, which meant a relaxed start to the day for once. Apparently.

Whilst my sister sat in her room, I showered, had breakfast, made us both lunch for later, and got water bottles filled, before then moving on to doing the washing up, washing some hand towels we’d got sunscreen on, and then finally got my bag ready for a day out.

We made our way over to the Eurostars Danube Hotel for the second day in a row for another pickup. My sister seemed more relaxed about this one. Richardo, our guide for this one, arrived five minutes early, and immediately set off on the ninety minute journey to Eger. This was in relative silence, as this guide wasn’t so talkative. In fact, as the day went on I started to suspect that he was actually just our driver for the day, and not a guide at all.

In Eger, the guide parked up for free on a side-street and then led us for around five minutes into the centre of the town. Here he pointed out the different wine shops that sold their famous ‘Bulls blood’ red wine, and the ruins of an old Turkish hammam.

There’s a large square in front of the baroque Church of Anthony of Padua, and a statue in the middle of this. Whilst we were there though it was obscured by a stage that had been put up for National Day celebrations. We went inside the church briefly, and then started heading back up the hill towards the castle. The guide pointed out the minaret to us, a remnant of the Ottoman Empire, and one of the tallest buildings in the city. If we’d had time, they do allow you to go to the top of it for a couple of Euros.

At the castle, the guide bought our tickets, and then told us he would be waiting outside and we’d have thirty minutes to look around rather than the advertised hour. This is what cemented my opinion of him being a driver and not a guide.

My sister looked around some of it, but wasn’t keen on the heat so went to sit in the shade whilst I then looked around the remainder of the castle as quickly as I could. I was moving quickly, not lingering long enough to read any signs, and there’s some areas I skipped altogether, and it still took me thirty-five minutes. I think at a normal speed, seeing everything, it would have taken the full hour we were supposed to get but I think some of that time is what was used in the town. So perhaps we got a good balance there.

The castle was built in the thirteenth century and in 1552, the 2,000 men, women, and children occupying the castle were able to fend off 150,000 soldiers of the Ottoman army. They were pretty impressive numbers. From inside the castle it does kind of make sense though as it’s clearly built on the highest point as we could see for miles around when we were on the castle walls, so it’d have been hard to sneak up on.

Some of the buildings had exhibits of historic artefacts, but I didn’t really have time to linger around any of them. I photographed what caught my eye, and moved on to whatever was next. There’s an open-air theatre, and what I assumed was the ruins of an old chapel. As I’d just about done a complete circuit of the wall I got a message from my sister that she was going to start walking down to our guide, so I rushed to catch-up and followed her to him.

When we got back to the car it was twenty minutes to the Saliris Resort Egerszalok where we’d then have 2.5 hours of relaxing in the thermal baths. It wasn’t on my must-see list for Hungary, but it was both something my sister wanted to do, and a common pastime of Hungarians and so it did make sense to try and fit in at least one. At this thermal bath they give you an NFC bracelet that has a pre-programmed locker associated with it, and you can also use it to get drinks and food whilst there - a tab to settle up when you’re ready to leave.

Whilst most of the various pools contain minerals (including calcium, sodium, magnesium and sulphur), there are also some that are just ordinary water as well, and one of the indoor sections included an area for jumping/diving, and a flume.

Before using the baths, I wandered around the grounds and photographed a large mound of minerals, and terraced pools of them. They also have a pond as well, but didn’t spend much time looking at that. Of the time we’d got, we’d set aside the last 55 minutes for getting changed, and having some lunch. It was slightly more time than we needed as we dried off very quickly in the midday sun.

It took about ninety minutes to get back into Budapest, and it was still early so after dropping our bags off at the apartment we headed back out. We started with a nearby stand that specialised in very indulgent kurtos kalacs, which we’d know as chimney cakes. I went for one that was filled with ice cream and Nutella, and topped with a Twix sliced in two. It was very sweet, and very filling. It was also incredibly messy as in this heat it was melting quickly.

We sat down outside the Dohany Street Great Synagogue to eat it, and thought we might go in. However at Ft9,000 (around £20) it’s one of the most expensive sights in the city to see when St. Stephen’s Basilica is Ft4,500 and Parliament is Ft10,000. We ultimately decided it wasn’t worth that much to go inside a religious building.

Our next stop was going to be the Great Market Hall, and to get there we took a route that was a little longer than normal, but we wanted to keep out of the sun for as long as possible. When we reached the history museum we sat on a bench outside of it for a while before continuing on. My sister had slowed to a crawl after this, and told me to speed up so I’d get to the market hall before it closed. She was going to wait for me outside when she got there.

I guess the question is: why would I want to visit a market hall? I’d seen photos of this tall metal structure that really was quite impressive to look at. I went inside, found I could go upstairs for a better photograph, took a few from there, and then rejoined my sister who was now sitting on the floor.

As a final sight for the day we thought we’d visit the cave church in Gellert Hill, so we crossed the Szabadság Bridge and sat in the shade on the other side. When she was ready to get going again, there was only a very slight hill to get to the entrance, however our timing was not great as we needed to wait 35 minutes due to our arrival coinciding with a service.

We were the first inside the cave church, and the entrance here is Ft850. It’s very unusual seeing a cave turned into a church which is what drew us to it, but there isn’t really a great deal to see inside so we were soon done and headed back via the next bridge along which we’d crossed a few times already on this trip.

At the other end of the bridge is the Lujza Bistro. We saw they do lángos, a local dish that is like deep fried flatbread with toppings, exactly what we were hoping to eat at some point on this trip. We found an empty table and sat down. After a while they told us that there was an issue with the kitchen, and it’d be a thirty minute wait. We still wanted to eat there, but figured we could use that time to do our food shopping at Lidl. We needed breakfasts and lunches for two more days. We also got a large bottle of juice, and we consumed half of it between us before we’d even got back to the bistro.

I’d hoped for the chicken lángos, but they were out of that, so went for beef paprikash lángos with a side of fries to share between us. I guess the batter was a little like eating a doughnut, but it was savoury with cream, beef, and salad on there. It was one of our more expensive meals at Ft13,270 - around £15 per person. With another item ticked off our list, we headed back to the apartment for the evening.