España: Esto No Es La Vida Real: Budapest, Hungary!

As bummed as I was to leave the amazing city that was Copenhagen, I was equally as excited to travel to the amazing city of Budapest in Hungary. All I knew about Budapest was what I learned from Bettina, one of my roommates from Amherst who was part Hungarian and what I had seen on my favorite tv show The Amazing Race. I heard nothing my amazing things about it so I figured what the hell. When else in my life can I run to Hungary for the weekend. Our Hungarian adventures got off to a rocky start. We had a connecting flight in Germany that we barely made due to a delay from our Copenhagen flight. Put at 9pm we finally landed in Hungary! And to think that we thought Danish was confusing…yeah that had nothing on Hungarian. We literally couldn’t even begin to pretend to know what was going on. After a confusing journey from the airport, getting stuck in ATM’s, and wandering down dark streets the wrong way for blocks, we finally arrived at our hostel. The description on the site said it was a party hostel and it for sure was not lying. We were so exhausted from traveling all day, the last thing we wanted to do was explore the raging Budapest nightlife scene. But that didn’t stop our roommates though. I am quite certain that I didn’t fall asleep that first night until 630 am and with a 945 wakeup to explore the city, we were struggling hardcore three hours later.

Saturday was our day for exploration since we had arrived so late the night before, we couldn’t get a feel for what Budapest was all about. We grabbed a quick pastry at a local bakery and then we were off exploring the city. Our first stop was the chain bridge which connects Buda to Pest. Yep they are technically two separate cities. Our hostel was in Pest so we would be walking over to the castle district in Buda. Along the way we saw some amazing architecture and I never really got the “im in eastern Europe” vibe at all when I was there…well except for the language. Once we crossed the bridge, we decided to climb up castle hill to get a better view of the city. From there we could see all of Pest,had amazing views of the Hungarian parliament, which has a striking resemblance to the parliament in London, and as well as the basilica. Since the weather wasn’t that great we figured we would head back to the hostel for a little midday nap and then make a game plan for what to do the rest of the trip. We were talking to the girl who was working at the hostel and she recommended a few restaurants to try as well as typical Hungarian dishes. After chilling for a little bit, we wandered down the main road to heroes square. That led into this gorgeous park with the famed Szechenyi baths and endless castles which made it seem like we were frolicking around Disneyland and not a park in a European capital. After our visit to the park, we were starved. A huge plus about Budapest was that it was beyond cheap. We took out 20,000 forint (which is a little more than $100 USD) and that lasted us three days, for food and hostel! We grabbed some typical goulash at a restaurant that the girl at the hostel recommended! It was soo good. We came back to the hostel, fully intending on going out. Kelly and I were bonding with the three Australian girls that were in our room, and one by one our voices faded and by midnight all 5 of us were passed out. Whoops!

Sunday brought a rested day and a walking tour of the city in the morning. We basically went on the same walk Kelly and I had done the day before but it was nice to know what we were seeing as well as some stories behind it. This day we again climbed up castle hill, but it was gorgeous and I think at that moment I fell in love with Budapest. On castle hill this day we ventured over to the castle that they believe in part influenced Walt Disney in the creation of Cinderella’s castle. Side note, we noticed a lot of Spanish speakers in Hungary which was comforting to hear something familiar to us. But I am not sure how anyone could travel to such a country like Hungary and not speak English. Anyways after our walking tour we grabbed gelato which was put onto the cone in a shape of a rose! It was soo cool looking! We also bought Túró Rudi which is a Hungarian chocolate bar which is filled with cottage cheese. Yeah it was as gross as it sounds but I figured we had to try it since we were there. We were all exhausted from exploring the city all day so we headed back to the hotel to chill before going out to dinner on our last night in Budapest. We watched music videos and even saw the Katy Perry Firework video which was filmed in the castle we were at earlier! For dinner we went to this really nice restaurant. There were 6 of us. Kelly and I, the three Australian girls we had met as well as an American guy who was going to grad school in Copenhagen. We ate some amazing food and it was so cheap. For the six of us, our bill only came to 11,000 forint, a little more than $50. Back at the hostel, we began some birthday celebrations for Matt. He had a friend visiting from the US and brought the forever missed red solo cups and flaming shots! We had so much fun with everyone but by the time everyone was getting ready to go to the bars it was close to 2am and we had an early flight to catch to Italy. We called it a night and wished the birthday boy well! We met some amazing people in Budapest and highly recommend that everyone visits Budapest. Everyone was super friendly and welcoming and there are some amazing sites there!