As the title suggest, I did take the thermal bath in Budapest today, but I took water all day long. Everywhere I walked, the rain was with me blowing in my face, down my coat and all around. It has turned so cold and wet here that I had to spend the morning looking for a heavier coat. Ironically, I bought a Columbia Sportswear coat from Portland. Had to get a new hat and scarf, since the new coat is brown and the grey and black would have clashed. To be honest, I was just not into going out and doing [View Full Entry]

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After yesterday, it was nice to have a quiet day. I checked out of the hotel, stored my luggage and went down to check out Wawel Castle. It was an easy walk, but the weather is so cold and windy. Looking at the weather online, it was a high of 40 and low of 34. I didn't have a lot of time, so looked around the courtyards of the castle, finding what's called the Lion's Den. It is a small spiral staircase that goes down the castle and leads to caves. It reminded me a lot of the Ape Caves in [View Full Entry]

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Budapest. I've been here for nearly 12 days so far. I've fall in love with this city. When I made plans to come here, I had no idea how lovely it would be. I have an incredible time on the river cruise which took off on the Danube at about 9:30pm. The Buda Castle, Freedom Statue, Parliament and other major sights and bridges were illuminated by lights. I am a spa addict. Everywhere I wanna try the spa's the resorts. the Gellert Spa, is a channels the hot thermal springs from the ground. The Gellert Spa is supposedly the most famous [View Full Entry]

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Haven't updated in a while so I figured I'd let everyone know what's going on. Last weekend the guys went to Oktoberfest, so I was here pretty much by myself. Another friend of mine and I decided to check out Szechenyi(?) Baths while they were gone, and it was AWESOME. It costs about $15 to enter, and you can stay as long as you want but get refunded $2-3 if you stay for less than 2 hours. It took us like 20 minutes to figure out how the lockers worked, but once we did we were ready to go. When you [View Full Entry]

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We made it through Romania and came back to Budapest this afternoon. I never thought I'd be so happy to be in Hungary again. Romania was the most interesting country we went to, but only because of its challenge and bizarreness. The people in Romania were very nice and helpful, but the policemen were a little odd. Again today on the train back we kept getting asked and asked again for tickets or passports. They would disappear with our passports, which made me uneasy. One policeman began questioning us where we went in Romania. In the middle of me listing off [View Full Entry]

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From Zakopane in Poland I headed across to the Slovak side of the Tatra mountains and stayed in the very small town of Zdiar, just on the edge of the mountains. I spent a couple of days there doing some more (much more leisurely) walking. As with the Polish side I managed to avoid all forms of snakes, bears and avalanches, which was a good outcome. I stayed in a really nice hostel there with some great people who won me over upon arrival with chocolate pancakes. Also tried some Slovak food which seems to consist of a lot of meat [View Full Entry]

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We made it to Vienna yesterday, which was more of a stopping point for us to get to Budapest. It was alright but not too impressive compared to Prague. We arrived in the afternoon and I forced Jessica to go site-seeing with me. It was the worst site-seeing ever. We wandered around, not even knowing what we were looking at. But, we did eat at a pizza place that had tabasco. It was amazing. This morning we left Vienna and now we're in Budapest. Hungary is really nice and probably my favorite country so far. It's a dirtier and not as [View Full Entry]

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We said our very sad farewell to the beaches and headed off to Budapest, Hungary. Thanks to a hot tip from two of our great friends from the Croatia sail we got into Budapest Friday night and parked in a fantastic central spot in the city for free! We set up as much as you can when you’re free camping, had a wander around the streets to stretch our legs and settled in for the weekend. Saturday morning we jumped on the metro and 4 stations later we were smack bang in the heart of Budapest. Our first stop was to [View Full Entry]

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Budapest, Hungary - August 13th - 26th, 2009 After finaly leaving Prague we took a 3 hour train ride to Bratislava, Slovakia - my home country. We were greeted by, Marta, my moms best friend since childhood. Marta and her daughter Mirka welcomed us with open arms and treated us like family from the moment we met. They showed us around the town as only locals can. Thank you again for welcoming us into your family! Before heading to Budapest we also made a brief stop in Sahy, where my grandmother lived and where I spent most of my summers as [View Full Entry]

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Today we went and spent the afternoon at a huge zoo on the other side of the city. Pics are on Facebook. Busy with classes the next few days, so probably no updates. [View Full Entry]

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