Travels Revisited: Budapest 2014

#budapest #europe

July 12th-

This is my first time in Austria and Hungary!

After 2 days in Vienna, we drove to Budapest to stay for a few days. We're staying on the Pest side of Budapest. The Buda side of the river is the richer area, the Pest side is artsier, grungy, more culturally hip. Like the suburbs vs the city.

Our apartment is very nice and tonight we have a dinner cruise on the Danube!

July 13th- Good Morning! Well afternoon here. We went on a 4 hour tour around Budapest today! Saw Liberty Square, Heroes Square, Jewish ghetto, a great view of the whole city from Gellert Hill, the opera house and the Parliment building front side square, and city park! Heroes Square was my favorite.

Our tour guide was Hungarian and she took us around the important spots! The opera house had 11kg of gold outlining the box seats. In liberty square, they had a statue of Ronald Reagan, because he was president when the Berlin Wall came down and Hungary was under communist rule. The view from Gellert hill was gorgeous. The Danube River splits the city into Buda and Pest. Tonight we will either go to a folklore show or The House of Terror museum!

July 14th-

We had a busy day! We went to the thermal baths, which is basically a giant hot tub. They were cool though! It was a popular tourist destination. We also had heard about these restaurants/bars that were built in old buildings destroyed by war. They just built a restaurant right in the middle of a half destroyed building. Nicknamed "ruin restaurants", we went to two because they are decorated with some of the coolest stuff you've ever seen. Like old bathtubs made into couches, an old German car made into a seat, disco balls, bikes hanging from the ceiling, old furniture no one has used for decades, graffiti on every wall, Christmas lights, old computers and so much more random stuff! It was really an interesting place to walk around in and take pictures. Then we went to another one that was filled with hammocks. You could walk right in, (it didn't have a roof) and just sit in a hammock. I think these places are special to Budapest because no one I was with had seen a building like that. Then we went to a Traditional Hungarian Folklore show, lots of stomping and yelling but very cool. Then we went around the corner to try a well known ice cream place. They shape the Ice cream into a rose. All in all a really good last day in Budapest!