Budapest

Where to begin talking about this interesting city. Well I guess I'll start by saying, I feel the more you travel, or at least the more I travel, the more I realize that even though I can absorb the atmosphere of a city in the few days I stay there, I still always leave with the feeling that I just brushed the surface, and wishing I could discover even more. This was definitely the case with Budapest.

I had already been to Budapest for a couple days, two years ago, with my sister. We had done a lot, like a walking tour, the castle district, house of terror and Hungarian spa. So I really didn't feel too much pressure to complete the tourist checklist. SO that led me to be able to completely absorb the city's atmosphere and mood. Which was lovely. I also extended my stay by a night, and switched hostels for the last one. Not because I didn't like the first one, but I wanted a change of scenery I guess (and it was 4 euros cheaper).

I stayed in a Hostel called GoodMo for the first 2 nights, which was near the Metro Station Kelvin Ter, which was within walking distance from pretty much all of the main sites. The hostel was really cool actually, it was on the top floor of a building (5th floor), and the elevator was.. well broken most of the time. But the hostel takes up the whole top floor, has a kitchen, common room, 24 hr reception, and a rooftop bar, oh and lotsa spare bathrooms around, in case a dorm-mate is taking forever. The bar isn't much more then a terrace, with a staff member that will sell you beer, or basic mix drinks, for those who are too lazy to go to the grocery store, since you are allowed to drink your own alcohol there. But the cool part is that, the whole building (other then the hostel) is underconstruction, aka no tenants (and honestly I don;t think they will be apartments when the building is done anyways)- so that means, the terrace is open til 2 am because there is no neighbours to awake,  which is pretty cool, and one of the first hostels that didn't shut the outdoor section at 10 or 12.

The first night I met a Australian Girl, and we went on the pub crawl promoted by the hostel. Which was over priced. But it did allow us to go out and have authentic Hungarian guides with us. We went to three different bars, well actually, I would say, a bar, a bar with a dancefloor and a club. Even though I don't think I got my drinks worth from the ordeal, I'll give it to them that they did bring us to alright bars, especially considering it was a Wednesday, and still packed with locals. I've found that while travelling, sometimes on weeknights bars tend to be saturated with tourists - and in a later post I will tell you about Bratislava, which takes the cake for drinking with locals, and non-English speakers.

The next two days, were pretty full of tourist activities. I went on a free walking tour, that has alot of history, and actually went to some different sites then the one I went on 2 years ago. I did a lot of walking, around both Pest and Buda and Marget Island. I also went to a thermal spa and the central Market, finding lunch for under 3 euros (and being stuffed) at the Market.

I think the low point of my trip was attempting to watch the sunset from the Fisherman's Basin in Buda. It is quite the hike, having to cross the river, and then climb god knows how many stairs to the top. Well I was happily clicking my camera here and there, the river, the bridge etc etc. And then, as I was walking up an incline, three excited terriers (on leashes don't worry) gave me a bunch of attention. I was really excited because two of them were Carin Terriers. I wanted to take a picture of one of them, and that's the moment when my shutter would not release because the battery power was too low. SADFACE!!!

So there I was, almost at the top of the hill, wanting to take lovely pictures of the sunset over the Danu, and my SLR is out of batteries. Let me back up a bit and tell you why I was so pumped to take pictures. It's because two years ago, we witnessed the most amazing sunset, and took - if I do say so- gorgeous pictures of the Parliment Building in the pretty dusk colors. However, these pictures were captured on little Canon PowerShot, point and shot camera. So I was excited about the opportunity to recreate the pictures with a more powerfiul camera.

Hence my disappointment, that even before 8pm I was stuck without my SLR and only my Canon PowerShot. I still had a good time walking around the Buda side of the river, and opted not to take any pictures. The only comfort that the sunset turned out to be completely underwhelming and wouldn't of made for good pictures anyways.

Zsimpla, a famous Ruin Pub

Parliment

Spa

On the Liberty Bridge

Hungarian Fried pancake, 

Statue of Liberty, one of the only remaining marks from Communist Rule

Chain Bridge

To end my post on a slightly happier note: SPA!!!

Well I went to the Gellert Spa, which is attached to the super nice Gellert Hotel. And it was super nice, I went with the Australian girl I met in the hostel. The ticket cost 4100 Forints, which was like 15 Euros or so. And there were a couple different sections you had access to. There was a pool outside, where you could also lounge and suntan around it. It was 26 degrees, and sometimes had artificial waves. Ya I know, wave pool is not exactly what I expected in a spa. Inside there was another pool, which was 27 degrees, we didn't go into it, because it required bathing caps, and besides, it was a thermal pool which was 36 degrees, we didn't go in this one either, it was a mixed. We went to the womens section instead. Which had 2 more thermal pools, 36 and 38 degrees, which was super nice. Then there was the steaming and plunging scenerio that you were supposed to do. This involves sitting in a steam chamber, for as long as you can stand it, which is a super hot room, and I guess is a "wet" sauna, because the room is super steamy and foggy, you can hardly see the other side. I found it pretty hard to breath and it hurt my eyes. It took me a couple tries to stay in the room for any amount of time. 

So after you are sweating out all the bad stuff and toxins, and feeling as though you are about to die, you go to a freezing cold pool. And then repeat. 

I did this about three times. At the end, the steam chamber was actually feeling really nice. After this routine, we went swimming in 27 degrees to get a bit colder, before heading to the dry sauna to end off our spa adventure. The dry sauna also had two different levels, we stuck to the really hot, rather then the unbearably hot, you feel as though there is hell on earth.

The morning before leaving to Vienna, I was able to go the market and spend most of my last forints, which was a nice endeavor. I took the Eurolines Bus with my new Australian friend, which was fun. The bus was 3 hours and cost 3900 Forints.