Buda + Pest

The theme of spring break was “how much money can we not spend.” There are pros and cons to this. We cooked instead of eating out. This was a great decision. Cause I love to cook and it meant we cook have big breakfasts with eggs and toast! We got really creative with our meals. Ginger and lemon chicken, curry veggies, soup, all kinds of pasta dishes. It was a nice break from traditional Italian cuisine. The cons were not being able to afford all the museums and famous sites. Everything is a tourist trap and cost outrageous amounts of money. Frequently we would walk outside churches and synagogues – but not pay to go inside. We still saw a ton.

Budapest is actually two different areas. Buda and Pest. Our apartment was in Pest. Getting to Budapest was a ton of excitement. We took an overnight train from Prague. Ive always wanted to take an over night train. It was like a slumber party for us. There was barely any room once the walls came down to make the beds. I don’t think I slept very much, but it was still exciting.
We spend one whole day doing nothing but hiking around to a bunch of the major monuments in Buda. Another day we spent at the baths. Its like several large thermal public pools. We had all forgotten bathing suits so we went to this huge mall to buy one. A guy told us it was like the second largest indoor mall in Europe. It was pretty big, but Im not sure if it was the second biggest. I spent hours in the pool and in the sauna.. Very relaxing. That night we went to an Indie Rock Concert. The band was really good. I think they were called Aiming for Sunday. This guy came up to me afterwards and invited me to the after party at this hotel nearby. Room 109. He gave me directions and then was like, by the way, you speak really good English! We tried to find this hotel without any luck. Then the next morning on the way to Buda we walked right by the hotel!
Leaving Budapest was also an experience. We had a 6am flight, but calculating getting to the airport and since the time was changing that night, it meant we needed to leave at 3am. So we were like, well we should just stay up all night then! So we did signed up for a pub crawl. Around 1 am we loved the people on our crawl and invited them back to our apartment for a party! Then at 3am we kicked them out, followed behind them with our suitcases and then got in a taxi for the airport. We arrived in Rome at 730 am and immediately boarded a five hour train to Padova.