Budapest

We got in to Budapest around 9pm - let off the bus on the curb, next to the metro station... - and somehow found our way to the hostel, which was actually in an apartment building. It turned out to be not only the cheapest (10 euro a night) but also the best hostel we stayed in for the whole trip - free breakfast, free laundry, and really friendly people. We went out to get some dinner and then crashed and slept late, we needed it. When we got up, we had a pretty slow morning, showering, getting our laundry ready, and eating breakfast. Budapest is actually divided into Buda and Pest, so we decided to go to Buda for the day. We took a metro up to the Parliament building, which was absolutely gorgeous, and then a tram down to the Chain Bridge, which is a remake of the first bridge to connect Buda to Pest - the original was destroyed by the Nazis during WWII. We took this little train up the side of Castle Hill all the way up to the castle, and the view as just incredible. I fell in love with the city. We wandered around Castle Hill for a while, looking at Buda Palace, Fisherman's Bastion, and the St. Matthais Church, and decided to eat lunch from a grocery store overlooking the city. It is always an experience going into a grocery store in another country, but it was fun and had a relaxed and beautiful lunch on Fisherman's Bastion. After we were finished, we decided to go to the Buda Labyrinth, which basically runs under the entire Castle Hill. We had fun for a while chasing and scaring each other in the dark and trying to find the legendary wine room. After going through almost twice, we finally stumbled upon it - I smelled it and Kelly saw it - and even though the wine was technically undrinkable, we had some fun hanging out and sitting by it. After we left the labyrinth, we went down Castle Hill and over to Gellert Hill, at the base of which stands the most famous/expensive hotel in the city, which also has the most famous/expensive Turkish Baths. Budapest is famous for its Turkish Baths because hot springs run under the entire city and naturally heat the baths. We climbed up Gellert Hill to the Citadella, a building constructed by the Austrians during the Habsburg period when Austria and Hungary were one country. It was a beautiful walk and a beautiful view, and we even stopped along the way to play on some awesome slides. Then, we found a Church carved into the side of the hill and wandered around it for a few minutes until we realized that mass was about to start. We had decided that we wanted to go on a cruise down the Danube at some point, so we wandered along the shoreline to try and find one. We finally did, and the man who sold us the tickets also helped us find somewhere to eat dinner. Perfect. So we got chicken paprika and onion soup and took a beautiful cruise down the river so we could see the entire city all lit up at night.

The next day, we slept in again and got going later in the morning to see the biggest synagogue in Europe, which was absolutely gorgeous. Then, we saw St. Stephen's Church, the biggest/most important church in Budapest, and got some lunch right next to it so we could look at it the whole time. Then we walked down Andrassy Ut, which is the main street in Pest and also has the House of Terror Museum, which is the former headquarters of both the Nazi and Communist regimes. It was a great museum, although completely in Hungarian. There were information sheets in every room, and of course we all collected all of them. So now I have a book of Hungary's history during WWII. After a short break in the museum's cafe, we walked down the rest of Andrassy Ut to City Park, where we saw the Heroes' Monument and the beautiful buildings that house the art museums. We walked further in to the park to get to the Turkish Baths, where we would be spending the rest of our last night. You can enter into the baths for only about 9 euro, which is incredible considering the baths have 3 huge pools (cold, warm, and hot) as well as a million little pools of different temperatures and various steam rooms/saunas. It was great, and I'm really wondering why we don't have that in the US - oh wait, it's because we don't have natural hot springs. Right. So after that, we walked back to the hostel to call it a night. We had to pack and get ready to go home the next day.

Traveling home was interesting. We got to the airport in about an hour and a half and our flight wasn't posted on the board. We realized that there were 2 terminals, A and B, so we walked over to the other one but it wasn't listed there either. Uh oh. So we went down to the information desk to try and ask, and they told us which line to stand in. After asking a bunch of people in front of us and hearing Spanish in the line, we were finally convinced that we were actually going to Madrid. So we waited in line and realized that it was 12:20, and our flight was supposed to leave at 1:20. Unfortunately, the desk hadn't opened yet...so we weren't sure what to do. Kelly went to pester the woman behind the counter, but she wasn't very helpful, and finally the desk opened for check-in, although they were probably the most incompetent airport workers I'd ever seen. The line wasn't that long and it took so long to check every in to 4 different windows. Also, halfway through the line, our flight finally got posted on the departures board. Pretty ridiculous, especially considering the fact that when we got up to the front of the line the man told us that our reservation had been deleted. We talked our way on, but by that time it was 1:10 and we had to run through security and get our seats on the plane, which ended up leaving a half hour late anyway. Oh budget airlines. So when we landed in Madrid after a slightly rocky flight, it was already almost 5 and we knew we were going to miss the 6pm bus from the center of the city. The next one wasn't leaving til 10ish, so we decided to hang around the airport to wait for the bus to leave from there at 9:30. However, we knew we had arrived in Spain again when we couldn't find the bus and when everyone at the information desk had no idea what was going on. Charlie tried to ask about the bus and the woman looked up the phone number on google for him. So helpful. So we decided to go to the city, but when we tried to buy tickets, all the 10pm buses were sold out since it is Feria in Sevilla, so we had to wait around until 1am. It wasn't actually that bad, though, we just had some extra time to spend together. We knew that everything was going to be ok when we came out of the metro, it had stopped raining, and there was a double rainbow. We got home on Friday morning at 8am and passed out until after 2. I already have some separation anxiety from the people I've spent the past 10 days with.

Budapest Pictures