Buda-pescht!

Last weekend my friend Lindsay and I took a trip to Budapest. My bad travel luck continued, as we had a half hour connection in Munich. We prayed that we would make it, and hoped there would be a little delay to make sure. Unfortunately, we made it with time to spare and instead had over an hour of sitting on the tarmac while a propeller was repaired. After we finally made it to Budapest, we made our way to our hostel. Our hostel was very small and we had a great hostel owner. He was super-helpful and pointed us to a great restaurant. Budapest is soooo cheap compared to Copenhagen. We were able to have a huge four-course meal with a beer each for less than $10!

We spent the rest of the day exploring Buda, more specifically Castle Hill. We saw the palace, Matthias Church, and the statue of Tural Bird. We were there right when the sun was setting, and we got some wonderful views.

View of Parliament from Castle Hill
Another view from Castle Hill.

That night we further followed our hostel owner's advice and went to a cool bar down the street. It was cool, it was open air and had bathtubs as seats. I guess they used all the bathroom equipment as furniture because when I went to the bathroom...


This is what I found! Yes, that is not a toilet, but instead a hole in the ground. It was a shock when I entered the bathroom.

The next morning we woke up early and headed off to go to the Synagogue. It is the 2nd largest in the world. Sadly, it was closed since it was a Saturday. Since it was closed we walked around and did a little Pest tour. First, we walked and saw the Opera house, House of Terror, and St. Peter's basilica. Then we did a bit of shopping (couldn't resist the cheaper prices) and ended up eating lunch at the market. Fact: Italian sauce in Budapest means ketchup. Otherwise, it was pretty good.

The rest of the afternoon we spent going to the famous Budapest baths. They were so cool/ confusing. Finding our way through all the locker corridors and figuring out how to rent our towels and stuff.
This was the ceiling of the bath lobby.

We went to the bath in the City Park, which we partly chose because it wasn't a nude spa. That did not keep us from seeing at least 6 naked, old Hungarian women. It was not a pretty sight. The actual spa was cool, had all these different pools that were like hot tubs both inside and outside. Some even had current pools and jets that were so much fun.

After we finished up relaxing at the baths, we went to explore the city park. We went to heroes square, a huge Hungarian monument.

Heroes Square!

That night we went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant and then off to a Rick Steve's recommended pub crawl (we followed Rick all weekend!). The pub crawl was neat, because it started off with an hour long cruise on the Danube. All the buildings were beautiful all lit up and my new camera took much better night pictures than my old one.
Buda CastleParliament

Sadly, we had to leave early the next morning for our plane flight. I was not excited to go back to Copenhagen and get to work!