Budapest

I have had this last week off from classes and don’t have to start again until the 13^th. Last weekend I stayed at school and hung out with some of the other Americans, Saturday night we went to a food festival. It was pretty cool and had a wide variety of food to try.

 Monday afternoon I left for Sarah’s and on Tuesday morning we flew to Budapest. I was in Budapest from Tuesday until Saturday night. Tuesday when we arrived, we got a shuttle to our hostel unpacked some stuff, and just did a little wandering around until eating dinner. Wednesday was our first full day in the city. We had a list of things we wanted to see while there and luckily got to see everything. First we headed to St. Stephens Basilica. Just like any other church, the interior design was amazing. There is just so much detail put into the work. After that we headed to Chain Bridge, which was the first bridge ever built connecting the Buda side and Pest side. We then walked down to the parliament buildings and took a look at them. After this we were hungry for some lunch so we got a baguette and some meat and cheese and made sandwiches. Then we headed back towards the hostel.

First view of Budapest

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St. Stephens Basilica 

Inside St. Stephens

Inside St. Stephens

 

Me & St. Stephens

Shoes Holocaust memorial on the river

Chain Bridge

Parliament Building

Thursday was full of relaxing. We headed for Széchenyi Bath, which is one of the more known ones in Budapest. We paid an entry fee for access to multiple pools, a relaxation room, saunas, and a 30 minute massage. We first sat in the outside pools for a bit, it was nice except when you got out because the wind was pretty cold. We sat in some inside pools for a little while until heading for our massages. The only thing wrong with these pools was that it smelled so bad. The massages were good as well. After that we sat in the saunas for a bit, washed off, changed, and headed back to the hostel.

The Bath

The Bath

 Friday we walked the most out of the whole trip. My fit bit recorded about 14 miles. We started by hiking up Gellért Hill. The view we saw from the top was amazing; you could see everything, we could see all the way across the city to where the bath was the previous day. We explored a bit around the top of the hill and then started the hike down. Once we got down we headed towards Central Market. After walking around the market we made a sandwich on a bench again and then walked down Vaci St. This street is one of the main touristy streets in the city. We found a small festival with a lot of street food and some live music and hung out here for a bit. After we walked back down towards parliament, just trying to waste time because I wanted to see everything lit up at night. As we got to parliament the flag was being lowered so we got to watch that happen which was pretty cool, and then we just sort of wandered until it was darker and chain bridge was lit up. It was pretty cool seeing everything at night. Then we decided it would be cool to see Vaci St at night so we went back and walked around again. After that we headed back to the hostel and packed our things to leave the next day.

Gellért Hill

Starting the clmb

Finally to the top

The view was amazing

Yolo. Swag.

Vaci St.

Princess statue and royal palace at night

Chain Bridge at night

Saturday was the last day in Budapest. We first went to House of Terror, which is a museum about World War 2, but it wasn’t that great. After spending a few hours here we headed back to the park the bath was in. We sat by a pond for a while and then wandered around this festival that was going on. It was just like the one from the night before, but way bigger. We wandered around a bit and then walked around the park a while before returning back to the festival to eat. We ate and watched people that were dancing and singing. We then headed back to the hostel to get our bags before the shuttle came back to pick us up to take us back to the airport. We arrived at the airport way to early and then our flight was delayed. Once we finally got back to London, I had to wait two hours to get through customs, but we finally got back to Sarah’s around 3 in the morning.

House of Terror

Street Food

More street food

See you later Budapest.

            In all Budapest was amazing, it was a pretty cool city with quite a lot to see. The only thing that was difficult was the currency and language barrier, but I would definitely recommend visiting here. Since getting back I have just been at Sarah’s and we leave tomorrow night for Dublin to visit Annie!

Some street art we found