Two days in one today since we didn't end up doing very much on our second full day in Budapest yesterday. This wasn't for lack of trying, but we got a little bit unlucky with some of the activities we had planned. First I had to work in the morning which was my first time working in the CEST timezone in several weeks, and meant I finished by lunch time which was nice. Our first planned activity for the afternoon was to visit the Museum of Terror about the Communist times in Hungary. However when we checked the distance to the museum we unfortunately saw it was closed on Monday's; this was our first activity scuppered. Our second activity was to go and visit the most famous mineral water baths in the city, the Szechenyi Baths. We had read that it isn't safe for babies to go in the mineral water so planned to do a short tour of the complex we had read about on their website and that was supposed to start at 4pm. We took the metro to the baths, making this our first metro journey of the trip, and arrived in good time at 3.30pm. When we went inside though the rather rude women at the ticket office laughed at us when we asked about the walking tour and simply said "no tour, this is public bath!" very abruptly. Without a tour to do, we thought that since we were here we might as well go inside (we had packed swimsuits just in case) and take it in turns to look after Lucy. However we hadn't brought towels of flip flops with us and the only option was to buy some from the adjacent shop, with no rentals available. We were prepared to spend a little bit, but of course they were only selling fairly expensive branded towels and flip flops, which would have worked out at £21 each. Given this meant the whole thing including entry would have cost nearly £40 per person, and we couldn't go together anyway, we decided to give it a miss at this point. We did get to take in the building though which is beautiful, and we stopped in the nearby park to have some afternoon tea and an ice cream stuffed chimney cake which was delicious.

Feeling a little deflated we got the metro back to the city centre and headed to another famous building we had been recommended: the Dohány Street Synagogue, which is the second largest synagogue in the world. The building was beautiful and it was interesting to read about how it was designed in a Moorish style, looking something like a building at the Alhambra complex in Granada. Apparently the architect did it like this since there is no such thing as Jewish architecture historically, and he wanted to design it with a Middle Eastern feel. After this we walked back to the apartment taking in more of the city streets. I then went for a lovely run along the Danube, first on the Pest side, then running over the Margaret Bridge to see the park in the middle of the river, and then back along the Buda side, getting to take in the much better view of the Parliament Building. We then went to a Hungarian restaurant (Púder Bárszínház) near our apartment to try some authentic Goulash (delicious) and local beer and wine.

As for today, we left Budapest bright and early at 8am since we had a lot of driving to do to get to our hotel near Lake Bled for the night. There are a few different ways to drive from Budapest to Lake Bled, and we opted for one which took us through the east of Austria since we haven't been to that part of Austria before. This route was the more expensive option though since it meant we needed to buy both an Austrian motorway vignette (€10 for 7 days) and a new Slovenian one (€15 for 7 days) rather than just a Slovenian one. It was refreshing to cross the border from Hungary to Austria without even stopping after all the hours waiting at different borders the last two months! Once in Austria we stopped for a late lunch at the country's second city of Graz. This was pretty much exactly what we expected from a second city of Austria, with the same architecture as Vienna, and a similar vibe with the streets being rather peaceful, well kept and clean. The city straddles the Mur river which we'd never heard of, and has a hill right in the centre with an old clock tower on top. We were going to have some schnitzel but couldn't quite find the right place with reasonable prices and dog friendly seating - some schnitzels cost €25 which we thought was a bit much for a lunch. Instead we opted for some wurst (hot dogs) at the market in the central square which were of course delicious given we are in a part of the world famous for its sausages!

Once we'd finished in Graz we hit the road for the last part of the drive to Bled. This was when finally after some very boring scenery on recent drives, we started to see something interesting again for this stretch. We left behind the flat plains of Central/Eastern Europe and started to reach the edge of the Alps in Austria. This meant hills that eventually became mountains in the distance and by the Slovenian border. We aren't quite in the Alps-proper yet (we'll get there tomorrow), but these are definitely mountains and worthy of a few photos along the way. As expected given we are now in Western Europe, the motorway was impressive and took us on many raised stretches across valleys and through tunnels. The final part of the drive as we crossed the border between Austria and Slovenia was through the 8km long Karawanks Tunnel which crossed the mountain range dividing the two countries, though cost €7.50 in an additional toll not included in either country's vignette which we thought was a bit cheeky.

Our hotel for the night is in a small village just outside Bled, and leaves us perfectly positioned to see Lake Bled in the morning before we continue our journey through the Alps into Italy.