This day was mostly a transport day, to get from Budapest to Athens. But since we had a relatively late flight, we decided to try to find the caches around the airport, and visit the Aeropark museum.

Approximate time out caching/traveling: 10 hours
Total walking distance: 9,25 km / 5.75 mi (14 000 steps)
Flights taken: 1
Total cahes found: 3
Total DNF: 2
Cities visited: Budapest, Athens
Famous places visited: Aeropark Budapest
Most memorable cache: GC32M2V BBT-E09 (the cache closest to Aeropark)
Biggest surprise: That some of the airplanes had attendants that told us about the history of the plane
Weather: Rain (Budapest), sunny (Athens)
Temperature range: ~3°C / 37°F (a lot hotter in Athens)

A relaxing start

We did not have to get up early, so we slept til around 9am, a lot later than 4am 😛 After eating breakfast, packing our bag, and checking out, we just had to wait for the airport transfer. Someone had messed up a bit, and sent the driver to a different hotel. He waited 20 minutes at the wrong place. And we waited 20 minutes at the correct place… The error was eventually fixed, and we got to the airport. We had planned plenty of time, to find caches, visit the museum etc, so we didn’t mind spending 20 minutes relaxing at the hotel.

No bag drop this early

With several hours until our flight, there wasn’t any bag drop open. So we got to test the airport bag storage. Since my feet hurts after walking 60-70km over the last days, we decided that it was worth taking a taxi over to the museum. Definitely worth it, that ride was cheaper than it is to just call a taxi in Norway 😛 It also gave us some extra time at the museum. Hungary is definitely a cheap country to visit!

So much fun

The Aeropark museum mainly consists of old Russian airplanes, from the former Hungarian airline Malév. Several of them were open, and we could walk inside them. It didn’t take long to realize that passenger comfort was paramount when these were still flying.

We got the question if we had ever flown a Russian airplane before, which we haven’t. Then we were encouraged to try the seats. Wow. This is by far the most comfortable airplane seats we’ve ever sat in! Even more comfortable than the chairs we have in our living room back home.

On the next one the seats were a bit more like we’re used to, but the leg room was about 2,5 times what we’re used to. Too bad it’s not like this anymore…

Caches along the way back

After visiting the museum, we followed the caches back to the airport terminal. It was raining for the first time on the trip, maybe Budapest was sad that we’re leaving already? Luckily it didn’t rain too much.

The caches turned out to be a lot harder to find than we would like, and we ended up only finding three of five, so two DNFs. But that’s still better than none!

Still enough time

We still had plenty of time left until our flight, so after picking up our bag from storage, dropping it and getting through the security, we had some time to relax a bit. And eat ice cream 😀

Definitely not like in the old airplanes

It was eventually time to board, and we’ve never seen people stand in a nice queue like this in an airport before! We’re used to people almost fighting to push their way into the gate. But everyone was standing nicely in line here, awesome! So nice when people act civilized.

Once we got on board, the awesome stopped for a bit. This airplane was definitely not designed with passenger comfort in focus, like the ones we visited earlier today… I don’t think I’ve ever seen seat pitch this crazy before.

And if that wasn’t crazy enough, the flight attendants wanted me to put my luggage down there as well! But they just moved on when they heard us speak English… And English was not a language the person speaking over the PA was very familiar with. It was impossible to understand what was being said, just like in the earthcache descriptions yesterday 😛 It almost sounded Greek to me 😉

But this was a short flight, so this shouldn’t be a big problem. We didn’t expect much, since this felt more like a low cost airline, than a normal Star Alliance airline, so we got quite surprised when they started serving food! A pleasant surprise. Guess this isn’t a bad airline after all 😉 (just crazy seat pitch)

Beautiful landing

The landing was simply amazing. Sunny and smooth – it felt like we had just flown into summer!

For the n-th time on this trip, we got to stand very close in a bus – airport sightseeing bus 😛 Almost looked like the airport doesn’t have jet bridges at all. When we finally got our bag, we just had to go through the door to meet our Welcome driver. He brought us safely to the hotel, and told us a bit about where things were located, what we should see etc. Perfect!

Amazing view from the hotel

After leaving our luggage at the room, we went outside to find somewhere to eat. After getting some food, we explored the hotel roof – and the amazing view. The really nice thing about this hotel, is that we have the same view from the balcony on our room! The hotel is in a central location, fairly priced and with an amazing view – perfect! 😀

Trip report

Curious about which caches we found?
You can see all of them on our trip report in cachetur.no, which you can find here.

Pictures