Hungary - July 8 & 9

Well, after our day in Bratislava we arrived in Budapest with a bang... we had traveled back to Vienna from Bratislava, gotten our stuff, and gotten on the train to Budapest without much problem. The Hungarian countryside was really pretty - lots of sunflowers, etc., but by the time we arrived in Budapest it was late and we were tired - our train was running late, and we called the hostel to let them know, as well as to make sure we had good directions. When we got to the train station, it was pretty much deserted, and we tried to find the metro entrance, unsucessfully. It was also raining, and we found a tram stop but didn't know which one to take, there were some homeless people sleeping around in the tunnels leaving the train station - it was the least safe I had felt on the trip so far. Eventually we found someone to ask in the train station, and found the metro entrance, only to realize that we had no coins to buy tickets with. I had exchanged the Slovakian money for Hungarian money earlier, but I only had bills, and Kasey only had euros... So eventually after some debating we decided just to get on the metro and hope we didn't get asked for our ticket/try to buy a ticket or talk to the people when we got off, since the metro was about to stop running and that was the only way we knew to get to the hostel! Bad plan, apparentely, because when we got off to switch lines, we did get checked, and they weren't very understanding about the deserted train station situation.... and so we got fined 6000 Forints each. Which, luckily only amounts to about $36 - in more developed countries its more like $100+. So that was a bummer, but at least we could get where we needed to go. Kasey was definitely frustrated, because it was preventable, but I was honestly just glad to get to the hostel successfully and not be fearing for my safety. So after that mishap, our first, it didn't take too long to find the hostel... and since the hostel was so cheap, over three nights, the cost of hostel + fine averaged out to about what we pay for a hostel other places. So whatever. We also had our first bad hostel night that night too... there were 5 girls in our room who went out and came back drunk and loud at 5:30AM... I somehow managed to sleep through it, but they woke Kasey up and kept her up for a while. The beds weren't to comfortable either and sooooo squeaky - I guess we had been spoiled before at other places!

So needless to say, after that night, we weren't to chipper in the morning! But we set out to discover Budapest anyway, and the whole time, I was just thinking 'I hate this!' and I wanted my bed. I think Kasey felt the same way! But after a while, the day started to look up, and we had some food and walked across the river to the palace/castle/museum area, which was really fun. We went to this awesome marzipan museum with all these crazy models and creations, it was incredible and defintiely improves our mood! We also got to take pictures looking over all of Budapest at the Fishermans Bastion, and saw an amazing church there, and we were pretty cheered up by the time we left!

crossing the Danube from Pest to Buda
(Buda castle on the left - now museums)

model of the Parliament Building made of mazipan!
Mattias Church was the coronation church of Hungarian kings!
view from the Fisherman's Bastion

We crossed back over the river and went to look at the beautiful Parliament building, and had lunch at a pizza place and Hungarian beer this time - we always like to order whatever is on draught and find out what it is! We walked around for the rest of the afternoon and went to St. Stephens Basilica (where they have his mummified hand - crazy!) and saw the opera house (while we were there, a few guys came buy pushing a copy of the statue 'David' ...random! we took a lot of pics of David traversing Budapest haha) and the synagogue before returning back to the hostel. For dinner we asked the hostel for a recommendation, and the gave us free drink coupons for a restaurant down the road that turned out to be amazing. We had wine and really spectacular food in a great atmosphere for not even that much money! So it was definitely a great end to the steadily-improving day! We also used the internet for awhile that night at a cheap internet cafe, and I got to call my family again, which was great. So all in all, the day ended up being pretty good!

my attempt at an artsy pic in St. Stephens Basilica

David being pushed through Budapest!

amazing dinner!

Our second day in Hungary, we headed out to Eger, in Eastern Hungary, which is the heart of the wine region. When we got there, we walked into town and took this cute little tourist train/tram thing down to the wine valley for like $3, which was awesome. There are so many vineyards in the area, and they all have their wine cellars carved into this one hill in the valley, so you can walk to them one by one and taste the wine, which was the plan. We had some great wine, some okay wine, and some really bad wine. In case you were wondering, it is pretty easy to tell the difference between wine that you don't like and wine thats actually just bad. And some of the wine was terrible! But a lot of it was really good, and we ended up buying a bunch - 3 bottles for me to bring home (little did I know the burden this would be!) and 1 bottle for Croatia, as well as a 2-liter plastic bottle of more for us in Croatia on the beach. It was just so cheap that we couldn't help ourselves. In the plastic bottle we got 2L for about $6 - thats almost 3 bottles of wine, and really good wine at that! The wine in glass bottles was more expensive, obviously, but still not bad. One of the main wines of the region is Bikaver, or Bull's Blood, due to some old story or legend that I can't remember right now, but anyway, it was good, and I'm bringing some of that home :) The day was a success, and we had lunch before heading back to town, and then back to Budapest. Our train took us through the beautiful countryside and we spent a lot of time trying to get good pictures of alllll the sunflowers! It was really fun. That night we ate at the same awesome restaurant again (I even had the same food, it was so good) - and they remembered us and gave us free wine again! Excellennnnnt. We packed up and headed to bed early for our morning train the next day.

beautiful hungarian countryside!

excited on the little train to the wine cellars!

our favorite wine cellar!

All in all, we really did enjoy Hungary, despite the first 12 hours being absolutely terrible. I always felt safe there other than our arrival, and everything was definitely cheaper than in other countries! If I go back, I'll just definitely try to arrive earlier haha.