Back to Eastern Europe

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We arrived in Budapest, Hungary four days ago and haven't even come close to seeing all of the city...it's ginormous! But we saw what we saw and enjoyed it.

The first hostel we went to was full, so the guy sent us to his friend's place. We walk into this extremely run-down building with weeds growing out of the tiled courtyard, concrete chunks already fallen from the wall, and overflowing trashcans in the entranceway. I wanted to get the heck out of there. However, turns out it's been a great place. Good neighborhood, awesome owner of the hostel, and pretty centrally located. Proves that looks can be deceiving.

Anyway, our first day out and about we went to St Paul's. The weirdest thing I've ever seen. It was literally a church built inside of a cave. It looked awesome. We then trekked up the hillside to the Citadel, which had a magnificent view....good thing after the hike to get there. It was built as a fortress to protect the town, but was never used.

We eventually found our way back to the bottom and strolled the streets until we found the Buda Castle. This thing was massive. An entire town inside. Four musuems too. For some reason it seemed bigger to me than the previous castles we've seen. This time we just walked around, looked at the gardens and statues, and enjoyed the view. We once again walked down the hill to the Chain Bridge and crossed the Danube River from Buda into Pest (yeah, who knew Budapest was actually Buda and Pest?!?!).

We also took a walk at night along the river and saw the whole town lit up. The Parliament building (medieval and massive) almost looked fake, the Chain Bridge was glowing, and best of all, the castle was straight out of a fairytale.

Another day we ventured to the Turkish baths which are located all around Budapest. 118 thermal springs lies beneath the city that flow into the pools and baths. They come from natural springs and provide medicinal value. Europeans actually get doctor "prescriptions" to spend 14/21 days at these thermal baths to help their arthritis and other ailments. They even claim that one of the pools helps skin cancer! There were tons of pools, both indoor and outdoor ranging in temperature from cold to HOT HOT HOT. We enjoyed the hottest and biggest sauna I've ever been in and didn't last long. Some of the baths smelled pretty bad as they contain some amount of sulfur. It was a very interesting experience, and quite relaxing. It pretty much wiped me out for for the rest of the day.

Our last visit was to Margaret Island where we sat on a bench and watched the fountain "dance" to classical music.

Next up: Venice, Italy; September 19, 2006

http://www.travelblog.org/gmaps/map_1Xk.html

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Photos

Chain Bridge
From the Buda Castle

Margaret Island
The Dancing Fountain

Comments

[El Banferino]

gift
Bring me back something nice!

[Meghan]

Ciao!
Hey Wilbur and Tenille, Ciao! I hope you guys liked Venezia and were able to take a gondola ride. Can't wait to see the other places you traveled to in Italy. Have some fun for me. Cya soon!