Last night was probably the best night of the trip so far in terms of sleep. I’d managed to cool the room down enough before going to bed, and I guess I’d probably started to get used to the noisy drone of the air conditioning unit. I got up at 07:00, even though I could have slept longer, and reluctantly got ready to run. I reminded myself that this run would be a last chance to see some sights before they were busy with tourists, so it’d be worth it.

My sister suggested I see what’s on Margaret Island so she could decide if she wanted to visit there later. She’d not slept very well though as she’d been very warm. So, as per her request, I ran to the island and headed to the ruins of the Dominican convent. I did stop for photographs along the way there of course, and I think that helped with handling the heat a little bit longer.

The island is named after Margit, the daughter of the 13th century King Béla IV, and the convent is a place where she hid after being promised to a neighbouring king, breaking the original promise he had made that his daughter would belong to the church. Escaping a fate you don’t want is something that King Béla IV himself did when Mongols invaded his lands, and he fled to Zagreb in Croatia for a time. Whilst I’d been to Croatia with my sister a few years previous, we’d not been to Zagreb.

When I was ready to leave the island I decided I wanted to visit the Queen Elizabeth statue, but it was 5K away. Part of the route back was on a running track but that looped under the bridge and I found myself having to go further than I’d intended. I was really hot now, so I ran-walked my way to the statue by the Erzsébet Bridge.

Once I got there, it was then only a short run back to the apartment, and I was in by 08:30 for a shower and breakfast. My sister was not well, with symptoms of potential sunstroke. I got lunch ready for the day, and waited as she felt that we would still go and see places. We left out at around 10:00 and walked to the Opera house taking mostly any street with shade we could. I wanted to make sure she was kept out of the sun to avoid making it any worse.

Once we’d taken a photograph of the outside, we went down to the metro so we could get to Heroes' Square without needing to be out in the sun too long. We found however that the northbound platform has no ticket machine so we had to go back up, cross over, and down to the other platform to get a single Ft350 ticket each, and then back to where we started. It’s not a long wait for trains, fortunately.

At Heroes' Square there was no escaping the sun. We crossed over the road to see the Millennium monument, and the statues surrounding it before working our way past the set-up for the World Athletics Championships. This was to be the start and finish for the marathons on Saturday and Sunday, but right now was stopping us getting close to this tourist attraction.Whilst hurrying to get out of the sun, my sister somehow hadn’t spotted a massive pothole, and tripped over it. I grabbed her quickly, and managed to stop her from hitting the ground too hard. We quickly moved over to the grass outside the Museum of Fine Arts and sat down for a bit to let her recover from the shock of it.

Once she’d eaten her apple, we moved on to an ice cream cart. It was a little pricier than normal at Ft600 for a small scoop, and we took our time from there wandering around some more of the park. My sister sat down on the only shaded part of a bench to finish her ice cream, and not wanting to sit in the sun I decided I’d stand under a tree instead.

We then walked around the edge of the water to almost where we’d started, sat down again, and then wandered over to the Széchenyi Thermal Bath. She couldn’t decide what she wanted to do today, as she wasn’t sure what else in the park she felt she could manage, so we thought we’d try the baths. The queues however were immense. We could see a long queue that wasn’t moving, and when we moved around farther to see why it was slow moving, we found the doors were actually closed. This was the queue for buying tickets for today, and there was another queue for people who had bought tickets online, and that was even longer. At only 11:00 on a weekday they were already full, and it seemed like a waste of time attempting to queue for this.

We walked almost a complete lap of the baths when next we stopped to sit on the grass. I was getting bitten by insects crawling over me by sitting there though. We decided we’d complete the lap so we’d be at the closest metro station, and we’d go back to the apartment for lunch. We could then visit Saint Stephen’s Basilica and Margaret Island in the afternoon.

I stood and queued for the ticket with the sun beating down on me, and my sister decided she’d wait in the shade. I couldn’t though if we wanted to get back, so instead I felt myself slowly getting roasted in the midday sun. The person in front of me was having real issues getting his ticket with at least three failed card payments, and I think the people behind were getting more and more frustrated by him. Eventually he got them, and moments after that I got ours, having had plenty of time to make sure I’d got the correct money in my hand for them.

At the other end, I think the heat was affecting my sister enough that she thought we were going to the cathedral first, but I reminded her we should eat first. When we got back, it soon became apparent it’d be some time before we’d be going back out again as she was sick once more. I used this time to pack ready for tomorrow, and then just sat and waited. A couple of hours later we went to the shops for drinks, but that was only a short trip out into the heat.

We sat back inside the apartment for the next few hours, and phoned home briefly. When we headed back out we looked around for somewhere to eat, and decided on La Lucia where I ordered a Hawaiian pizza, and my sister just had fries, unable to stomach anything more than that. I think the food there was a little on the expensive side, but they did already include a 15% service charge so we didn’t have to think about what to tip.

We then walked back to the apartment for the last time, and our time for exploring Budapest was over.