Budapest, Hungary

Budapest Parliament Building on the Danube river

Adam and I began our 12 day, central European spring break adventure in the city of Budapest (country: Hungary) which actually is two different cities, Buda and Pest, split in 2 by the Danube river, connected by a few bridges. We flew in on a very overcast, stormy afternoon, bummed at our bad luck.. our hostel (which turned out to be a HUGE apartment all to ourselves- kitchen, bathroom, living room, etc) was on the far Pest side, just outside or in the Jewish quarter. It turned out to be an excellent location, walking distance to most things, but it didn´t matter because we actually walked EVERYWHERE, including numerous hikes up mountains, hills, etc..

The arrival into Hungary was confusing for a lot of reasons:
1) IT was really cold, and raining. A huge change from the blue skies and warm sunshine we left in Barcelona
2) Currency exchange.. after 7 months in Spain, we are finally adjusted to the euro and can convert into US dollars pretty easily (although it is only getting more painful)..When we got to Hungary we needed to exchange our euros for the Forint which is about 2.64 to 1 euro... what turned us around the most is that things like pretzels cost 800 forint and they had 200 forint bills which are actually worth less then one euro, but it was hard to grasp the concept that the coins were pretty much worthless. In our confusion, we accidently spent 30 euro on a dinner at a pizza place (obviously in a very touristy area)...thankfully it was good pizza and we probably would´ve passed out if we didnt eat at that restaurant anyways, so it made it a little easier to deal with the fact that we just spent 6000 forints on our first meal.
3) The language barrier: We actually didn´t know 1 word of Hungarian before we arrived, and we tried asking our taxi driver for a few phrases but we were finally in a position where the majoirity of people do not speak a language we know/mostly understand (English/Spanish).. It was entertaining and interesting...We learned a few words: hello, goodbye, thank you and cheers... I would type them but we didn´t ask how to spell them, and I think it would just confuse myself even more.

Once we felt more comfortable (a good night rest, satisfied apetite) we had an amazing 3 days in the city. As luck would have it, we got sunny, clear skies everday (except for drizzle one evening) AND we arrived just in time to celebrate National Hungarian Day with the people of Budapest. It was a wonderful festival, with street fairs, food booths of Hungarian cuisine (one of my favorite meals of the trip!), traditional Hungarian music performers, dancers, historical activities for the children, and lots of foot traffic everywhere! It was colorful, and warm and very entertaining for us.

Lots of horse parades and men in crowns and capes

There weren´t actually any words exchanged in this photograph sesh.. which could´ve been awkward for them, but...it was necessary, plus.....

I got a crown! Viva Hungaria!

Hiding in the Hungarian flags



Hungarian babies and old people are the cutest...Chess must be a pasttime because there were chess matches going on everywhere!


Check it out: a Hungarian dance team performing during the all day festivities, and they are good! I doubt my skills could challenge

Dohány Synagogue, largest in Europe, 2nd largest in the world..it is really beautiful, and gold.

St. Stephen´s Basilica.. Adam kept saying Basilisk..which is that snake from Harry Potter..dont look at its eyes!

This picture is for Dave...this Hungarian harmonica player got the thumbs up and a tip for representing the Pirates on the otherside of the pond

This was such a cool castle...which was actually a church..but it also had an incredible view of the city from above.


A not so cheerful encounter...if you look closely you can see that the dark things along the river are iron shoes. This is a simple but very powerful memorial for those who were murdered along the Danube river during WWII. Although..it is very beautiful with the Chain Bridge and Palace in the background.

One of the reasons why Budapest was my favorite cities.. We spent a few hours at this place called the Széchenyi thermal baths.. all the pools outside were heated and had whirlpools, plus, there were lots of Hungarian old men in speedos.. There were saunas all over the place and heated baths inside as well which had medicated water.

This is Heroe´s Square.. Right outside the biggest city park, where the Széchenyi baths are located... This was literally a 2 minute walk from our apartment.

We saw a lot of amazing architecture in Budapest, and had some pretty incredible picturesque views from various hikes.....we also learned a thing or two...Mr. Rubik of the Rubix cube was Hungarian..our hostel guide also informed us that Hungary was a communist country only 18 years ago which would explain why English is not as widely spoken as most European countries...the people were warm and the food was amazing...Adam and I miss GOULASH soup so much!

If I had to, overall I could definitely say that this was my favorite city of the whole trip.

Adam has finished a compilation of videos from the Hungary portion of our spring break adventure so go watch it!!! (also a lot of these pictures are stolen from him too)
CLICK HERE: http://adamprimack.blogspot.com/