BudaBudaBuda. PestPestPest.- "Are We In The Castle?"

I love Budapest.

To say the least, this weekend was a bit ridiculous, loads of fun, extremely cheap and a bit foggy.

Ridiculous in the sense that Kirby, Christine and I had NO plans. Just a city to explore and a day and a half to do so. Loads of fun because we lived on shady lane, had no HUF, ate out of a garbage can and searched for a castle that didn't exist. Extremely cheap since we met friends who bought us delicious Turkish food, ate bread and salami for lunch, got lots of free salty crackers and trashed picked our last breakfast. And most definitely foggy since the whole first day the city was covered in fog... we couldn't see anything!

So I'll start at the beginning...

After our 7 hour bus ride through the countryside of Prague and Hungry we arrived in Budapest, only to be dropped off on a corner with a shady pub. So there we were, knowing three Hungarian words, with no HUF (currency), and no clue where we were going... We found the nearest metro station with no trouble, only to find that they didn't have an ATM and the ticket machines only took HUF. Unlike the other students on our bus who were quite loud and rude, we pulled out our map and started to attempt to find our way to our hostel. The lovely metro police men saw that we were in a predicament and came to our rescue! He showed us which stop we needed to go to and told us to get on the metro without having a ticket! We said "köszönöm" (thank you) and were on our way!

We made it to our hostel after only a few wrong turns. The Mandarin Hostel was quite nice, although it was in this really creepy, dark alley. We didn't sleep much on the bus so we were all exhausted and had a long day ahead of us.

Nine o'clock and we were up! After a lovely breakfast of bread and peanuts (we are cheap) we made our way over to The Castle Hill on the Buda side of the city. The city is split into two parts, Buda, west of the Danube River and Pest on the east. It was a really foggy day so it was hard to see much of anything. We crossed over the Danube on the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, barely able to see the other side of the river through the fog.

Kirby and I about to cross the bridge.

Up the hill we climbed to the deceitful Castle Hill. Budapest must have a great sense of humor, because there is NO castle on Castle Hill. And it was this non-existent castle that we searched for, for a good three hours.

We did find The Fisherman's Bastion, a beautiful terrace overlooking the Danube, giving you a great view of the whole city.

Fisherman's Bastion.

What we could see of the view.

(We didn't see this view thanks to the fog!) Next to the bastion was Matthias Church, a gigantic gothic structure that is the heart of Castle Hill. The Royal Palace stood at the end of the hill, a gigantic Baroque building that used to house the royalty of Budapest. Christine and Kirby went into the underground labyrinths, it was a bit too expensive for me!

Most of the afternoon was spent walking around the little streets, peeking our heads into antique shops and other small boutiques.

Random.

We also stumbled upon a memorial exhibit to Joseph Haydn, who happens to be my favorite composer! With a student discount, a dollar was all we needed to enter!

Crossing back over the bridge in the fog.

We left "Castle" Hill around 5 and set out for the baths!! Budapest is famous for their old, yet beautiful baths and we were sure not to miss them. The Széchenyi baths are known for drawing a younger crowd, but even on a Friday night there were people of all ages. Needless to say, I saw a few too many old men in speedos =) The three of us got changed, rented a towel (sheet) and ran out in the cold and into a nice hot bath. Basically it is a huge hot tub. It was so relaxing after a long day walking around.

We met two really nice Turkish guys, Koray and Sabri, and hung out and talked with them for awhile. They took us to one of the saunas in the bath complex. It was unlike any American sauna I have ever been in! You literally couldn't breath when you walked in, the heat was ridiculously intense. After two minutes, Kirby and I were running out! After a few hot hours in the baths, we went with the guys back to the Turkish restaurant they worked at for some food. We were all extremely grateful for a free meal of delicious kebabs and Turkish rice pudding (our new favorite food)! It was a getting late so we headed back to our hostel.

Our second form of free food. "Salty-crackers"... we got like 15 packs!

I wasn't feeling that good, by the time I was at the hostel I was shaking and everything was spinning :/ I was really dehydrated from lack of water and being in the baths so long. I chugged water in bed and Kirby and Christine went back out. They spent an interesting evening lost in the rain; getting back to the hostel around 5am, soaking wet and tired. Dehydration sounds better to me...

Saturday morning we packed up our things and checked out of our hostel. Not before our lovely free breakfast. While this may sound horribly unsanitary and disgusting, it was free. The people in our room that we had met threw away a bunch of their food! For those of us who are really cheap, this is unthinkable! So... we picked it out of the trash once they had left =) Three perfectly good bananas and half a bar of chocolate was the perfect breakfast for us.
We made it to The Great Market Hall and spent a few hours just walking around here. It was this huge building with two floors of open market stands inside. The first floor was all fresh produce and meat, fruits and vegetables lined every aisle! The second floor has tons of independent booths, each with traditional Hungarian things. We all bought some souvenirs, tried on lots of fur hats and then grabbed some brats for lunch.

Me in the Great Market Hall.

Our time was running out so we went to the Buda side of the Danube for an incredible view of Parliament building. It is huge, it is beautiful, it is really gothic, and I love it. A lighter stone, unusual for gothic structures, made it stand out from the whole city. Thankfully it wasn't foggy, so we had a great view of everything.

Kirby and I in front of the Parliament Building.

We hurried back to the Turkish restaurant to buy a bunch of rice pudding to take home with us, it was that good! We made it back to the hostel to grab our things and then on to the bus station. The whole weekend was so much fun, while it was a short time, we still saw so much and made so many memories =) I couldn't have spent it with better people either!

Kirby, Christine and I in front of Parliament.