Budapest

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The Keleti train station was kind of a miserable place to be in after the warm train compartment. It's pretty much an open plan and has no place for people to wait out of the cold..at least I couldn't find one and boy, was it cold! My host met me and we went back to the apartment and I got a taste of home cooked Hungarian stew 😊 I went to the central market which was quite big and interesting. I met up with some people there and got some food upstairs. I tried it since some people in a forum I read had said that the food there was good and cheap. Personally, it kinda sucked since it had been sitting there for a while and the prices on the shopping street outside were better.

Later on we climbed up to the Citadella where the views were awesome. Some Asians we kept bumping into asked to take a picture with me....I don't understand it. Sure, we kept bumping into each other but I wasn't the only asian tourist in the city. It was very strange. After the Citadella, we headed to the castle and the route we took was possibly the longest and slipperiest one I have ever had the dubious pleasure of taking. I split up with the others and headed back to my host's place where we had a dinner party then a few rounds of Uno. I added the four primary colors in Hungarian to my vocabulary. Absolutely useless but very entertaining for the various Hungarians I've met 😊

Saw the Pest side of the city the next day with a couple of stops at the castle on the Buda side for more pictures. I also randomly met the asians from yesterday and walked a little with them but we eventually split up to see different things. I had to change hosts and my new host was awesome. I was a little upset at having to change hosts at first but it worked out alright and so I had two great hosts in Budapest. I didn't get to go on a day trip to Visegrad or Esztergom because it snowed the next day but I did manage to get to the Szchenyi thermal bath which was really really nice especially since I went midmorning and not that many people were there.

I tried to get a bus cheap ticket to Pecs but couldn't and after a while I gave up and just paid since the lady just wouldn't budge.

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