A Tale of Four Cities, Part 2

Budie Budie Budie Budie rockin everywhere… and don’t forget Pesht (September 8-11)

Our flight landed early in the morning in Budapest, and we could already feel the difference. Many more people spoke English and were somewhat helpful when it came to navigating the public transportation. Budapest is divided into Buda (the older part, more historic sights) and Pest (pronounced Pesht, where we stayed and where most of the restaurants and fun things to do were). The buildings are beautiful – everything was grand and large, and most were the same height – around 4 or 5 stories. The architecture was really similar throughout, and was completely modern compared to Istanbul. Most of the streets were wide, symmetrical, and had lots of outdoor cafes and restaurants.

Our hostel was very clean and bright – worlds better than Chillout in Istanbul. Everyone spoke great English, but there were a lot of the “hostel” type there – randos who traveled for 5 months and had been living in the same hostel for weeks… bumming around and not really doing much. Weird life, but I’m sure they’ve met some amazing people? It was weird because they kept asking us to hang out, or come to the bar or whatever, but we were a content group of four that didn’t need or want to make any new friends. We would plan out what we’d say before we came back to the hostel in the afternoon – if asked, everyone would just say I was in charge (easier than coming up with a story for everyone to remember), and then I pretended we had plans. Oops.

The first day we had a nice breakfast of Hungarian omelets (actually they were normal omelets but we ate them in Hungary!) and learned how to say “please.” That was the only word we learned the whole time – Hungarian is SO hard to learn! The vowel sounds are ones we don’t even make in English, so that made it kind of difficult. Plus, most people spoke English so we didn’t really need any Hungarian.

Street where we ate breakfast.... the first place we actually sat down in Budapest.
After coming from Istanbul it felt SO different. Cleaner... more English... more normal food.

We did some sightseeing but mostly looked from the outside – the Opera House and Parliament, Roosevelt (yes, our Roosevelt) Terrace and St. Stephen’s Basilica. We climbed up to the top of the basilica for an incredible view of the city. (picture at top of page and the one below too)

In front of Parliament

The weather was great and it was a relaxing day. We had a late lunch and played cards in a park – the game “asshole” became the trip favorite. I always carried the cards with me just in case we found a park – which we managed to do in every city! Our new game in Budapest was to find every statue we could (and there were a TON) and pose like the statue for a picture. We got really into it:

Sami is tickling his armpit in this one

Games in general were a hit on the trip.... from Asshole to Euchre (Andy's new card game), GHOST, Guess Who... guessing what time we'd get back to the hostel or something -- we were always looking for some sort of competition (usually boys vs girls, obviously).

That night we met up with Dalila and Mike for a delicious Hungarian meal. Mike and I were the only ones who thought it was good, though. I had stuffed paprika (basically a big pepper stuffed with meat/spices) with potatoes and a delicious thick red sauce. I loved my meal but Andy was not a fan of his goulash! It wasn't great but I'm glad I tried his just to say I had. The food was very rich so I think that's why people didn't like it. Mike got stuffed cabbage - can't go wrong with that. After dinner we wandered around and found this open-air bar that was awesome. All of the bars in Budapest were like this - you would go in a main door/entrance but the bar would be in a courtyard/terrace type thing, with tons of seating. This one was so cute with wicker couches and sculptures and trees.

Michael and I stupidly tried this Hungarian liquor called Unicum, made out of 12 herbs. It was disgusting and I had to mentally and physically prepare myself for the smallest sip. After 2 sips I realized it wasn't worth it and he finished mine. Trooper.

The next day we walked across the bridge to Pest and went up the funicular --

that led us to the Hungarian National Museum. We hung out in Old Town and looked at some cool old buildings that you see on all of the postcards... couldn't really tell you much about them though. We had lunch in a park (where else?) and kept walking until we got to Magrit Island, a little Island in the middle of the river. It had amazing parks and gardens, and a TON of space to play cards, of course. The water was beautiful and it was great to do some people watching. We took the bus home, making sure we took every kind of public transportation we could in Budapest.

I don't remember where this was but it was somewhere along the water in Buadpest and it's pretty badass.

We had Italian food for dinner (it was definitely refreshing after all of the ethnic food we'd been having) and went to another cool outdoor bar where we played cards at the table! Of course, our luck, all of the people from the hostel were at the SAME BAR! We avoided them because we are very unfriendly, of course.

Our last day we went to the House of Terror Museum where we learned about the Nazi and Communist rules of Hungary... definitely not something you remember from history class in particular. It was a lot of reading but really interesting. We walked up to Hero's Square and the City Park and then went to the public baths! They were beautiful! You can see the outside area below -- it was huge. There were three huge pools with fountains and jets and currents, and then inside the building there was pool upon pool upon hottub upon sauna.... it really was endless. Each had a different temperature and a different kind of light in the sauna. It was packed and we didn't have that much time, unfortunately, but it was so nice to be outside and go swimming! Michael's waterproof camera came in handy here.

Heroes' Square

Our time in Budapest ended with a trip to the grocery store for snacks for our overnight train ride (cookies, nutella, bread, pretzels, and champagne... SO nutritious), and we even got to see a guy sitting at a cafe get punched and knocked completely over. Very exciting.

The couchette was great! We payed $10 more per person to have the car to ourselves. It was very tiny, with two benches facing each other. There were six beds (three stacked on each side) but we only unfolded four. We actually were able to get a good amount of sleep, and the door locked so that was good! They didn't wake us up to stamp our passports, but each time the train stopped I woke up from the announcer. It was surprisingly comfortable though, and I slept more on the train than I did on the redeye from Dulles to London.

Sitting on one side of the car.

Sami and Michael were troopers and slept on the top bunks (they had to do some pretty crazy gymnastics to get up there)
And Andy and I were on the bottom. There was not enough space to both stand on the floor and store our luggage, so our bags sat in the little aisle.

Sorry this was so long! Hopefully the photos helped. Two cities down, two to go. Off to Stonehenge, Windsor Castle, and Bath tomorrow on a little daytrip.