Budapest, Hungary

Photo credit: lonelyplanet.com

One of the first things I learned about Budapest: Buda and Pest are actually separate areas, separated by the Danube River. In 1849, the beautiful chain bridge was the first bridge across the Danube, and in 1873 the two cities united to become Budapest.

Budapest's Parliament, which was modeled after the Palace of Westminster in London.

Matthias Church on Castle Hill. I loved the tile roofs!

On Chain Bridge, which connects Buda and Pest.

Our hostel (another Wombats) was in Pest, and was situated smack dab in the middle of a ton of bars and restaurants, and just a short walk to the center area.

Our first excursion, as it was the eve of Valentine's Day, was to get Padthai Wokbar and then trek across to Buda and up Castle Hill to the Fisherman's Bastion to enjoy a sunset. We made it there just in time to see the sun fall behind the mountains. 11 girls, Budapest, fast food and a sunset. Doesn't get more romantic than that.

All 11 of us on Castle Hill, overlooking Pest.

After that, some of the girls bought cheap wine at a supermarket (no need to cringe though, because in Hungary, cheap wine doesn't mean bad wine). Patti and I bought cheap cereal, which ended up tasting like chocolate plastic. I guess the same thing for wine doesn't hold true for cheap food.

Soon after that, it was time for the Budapest pub crawl! Once again, we met a lot of really nice foreigners on this pub crawl. Our guide, Mark, admitted to some of us that he was new at this and we were his first big group (there were probably 30 or so of us). At some point during the crawl, he let people stop and get pizza (which was the worst pizza I've ever had) and in the process of getting to the next bar, he left seven people behind — one of them being one of the girls in our group. Oops. Luckily, that pizza place ended up being next door to our hostel. Anyway, we got to see some of the ruins bars in Budapest. I wish I had pictures to post, but ruins bars are essentially abandoned buildings and unused outdoor areas that have been transformed into eclectic bars. The most interesting one was Szimpla, which was the biggest bar I've ever been to. It had so many different areas, both outdoor and indoor, with exposed piping on the ceiling and a mixture of paintings and photographs on the walls. There were plants in some areas and a mixture of types of furniture. It's hard to describe just how unique this bar was, but suffice to say that it was really, really cool.

The next day we took it easy and took a tour of the city and ate some really good food. A lot of the food we ate on this trip was similar (goulash, goulash, goulash), so I'll just post some of those pictures here. For my dad's sake. :)

I couldn't help but dig in before this picture was taken.
Roast beef, cranberry sauce and potato dumplings in Prague.

Goulash and bread dumplings in Prague.

Our tour guide said this was a popular Hungarian dish, and I sure hope she was right,
otherwise I ate a mountain of fried dough, sour cream, cheese and ham for nothing.

On our last day, Patti, Melissa and I headed to the House of Terror, which I learned is not a haunted house. It's actually a museum/memorial dedicated to telling the story of the Nazi occupation and the communism rule in Budapest. It was pretty haunting and a little similar to my experience at Dachau. I wish we had a tour guide, however, because a lot of the signs were only in Hungarian.

Outside the House of Terror. The building used to be the headquarters of
the secret police of both the Nazi and Communist governments.

Bullet holes in the former Ministry of Defense building,
leftover from the Communist regime.

Later that day we successfully survived a Ryan Air flight and made it back home to Granada. Before coming to Spain, I didn't think I'd visit any of the countries we traveled to during Semana Blanca, but I'm so glad the opportunity came up. This was one heck of a trip.