After our perfect day in Vienna with my wonderful travel buddies, we took an early train ride to Hungary's capital city, Budapest! I couldn't tell you anything about the train ride because we slept the whole way; rather uncomfortably, but, we slept. We had three days to explore! The first day was our long walking day! We walked all over the city. We started on a walking tour but it wasn't holding our attention well enough so we snuck away to play on our own. We at least learned that originally there were three cities (Buda, Pest, and Obuda) that were united over the Danube River to make the capital city of Budapest. And this is what we found...
This is the bridge crossing the Danube River near our hostel. It had such a great view of the city so we took our time walking and taking pictures and cheering on the marathon runners that were passing by. Don't let the beautiful sky fool you, it was a windy day! During WWII and the Nazi occupation, all of the bridges connecting the cities were destroyed (along with most of the city). But they were all repaired beautifully.
This is their beautiful Parliament Building! It was modeled after the Westminister in London.
It was quite a little inner city hike to get up to Castle Hill, but we did it! And it was so worth the beautiful view.
This was also on the top of Castle Hill. It was a pretty big area. More than just a castle but a palace area. There was a beautiful church, stairways, museum, officer post (we saw the changing of the guards), and yea, palace. For the part of the tour we did hear, they told us that in the earlier days, Hungary was the winner of their time. But then they became the losers and have not been able to come out of that hole. Yes, her words, they became the losers on the battle field and in the conquering world. So after continuously being ruled and overtaken by other countries, and occupied by Nazi rule and then under Soviet rule, Hungary won its independence and is now a democracy and apart of the EU. Even though there is still contraversy about their current President.
We had to take a break from so much walking.
Hero's Square. Monument to Hungary's long fight for independence.
State Opera House. We didn't get to spend an evening at the Opera in Budapest like we did in Vienna.
We had a lovely traditional dinner that night at a typical Hungarian Restaurant that was super touristy with terrible service. It was kind of funny how we continued to have to correct what we ordered or ask for more and how they just did not care. But it was still yummy. Then, of course, we explored the city by night. And stumbled upon some sort of car commerical shoot with a rather large pig oinking around infront of the club we went to and some sort of concert. I don't know what kind of music it was. It was past my bedtime and I nearly fell asleep on the bean bags on the floor :) haha Sorry Anna, and Hayden, I tried to be a trooper. I was so tired, I didn't even want to dance. And I always want to dance so you know I was tired!
The "City of Spas." On our second day there we relaxed at the pool. This area is known for having natural thermal springs. It was one of the reasons the are was settled in the first place. When Turkey had control of the area they had a big influence on buildling all the baths there. Some of them are still there now. They told us that a lot of elderly people or people in some sort of physical therapy have perscriptions to go to these baths. There are several spas inside but we were lucky enough to catch a good day and swim in the warm water outside!
The hostle we stayed in was so great! It was called the Groove Hostel. It was just a normal (but big) flat that they were renting and turned into a hostel. It was this old building with a courtyard. I liked it! It was really homey and much more of an ideal hostel rather than hotel. There were a lot of young people traveling and good company. The people working there were so nice to talk to and laid back. Not about touristy stuff to do but just to talk with. And they made us coffee. It was so nice of them. That is the way to my heart haha And they had a lovely balcony that we sat out on until dinner that night.
We went into their Museum of Fine Arts on our last day there and saw a great photography exhibit called The Birth of Photography.
After the museum, we went shopping for a bit, and then climbed the winding stairs to the top of the St. Stephan's Basillica and enjoyed another wonderful view of this beautiful city.
Budapest is such a great city to visit! We enjoyed our time there very much! The bar was set super high from our amazing start in Vienna. So Budapest was the perfect stop after that. We took the train back to Vienna on Tuesday night and spent the night there before heading back to Munich. We celebrated our wonderful trip on our last night out in Vienna. Thanks Anna and Hayden for being such great travel buddies and explorers with me :) Couldn't have asked for a better trip to Vienna and Budapest!
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