Budapest & #30!!!

Budapest had that certain "je ne sais quoi" that Vienna didn't have for me.  I found it to be a very cool, relaxed city that seemed very liveable.  Budapest is actually 2 cities... Buda and Pest, separated by the Danube River.  The city seemed grungier than imperial, clean Vienna... and the buildings/subway were kind of retro-chic instead of grand and imposing.  I liked it!

Buda & Pest ... the big building on the left is the Parliament

We did a walking tour of Budapest which led us to St. Stephen's Basilica (St. Stephen was everywhere in Europe).  Inside was the right hand of St. Stephen himself, encased in glass and lit up if someone put in a 2 Euro coin!  Weird, but interesting I guess!

St. Stephen's Basilica

We also visited the hill overlooking the river and the gorgeous parliament building.  There were really cool views from a place called Fisherman's Bastion.  After the walking tour, our guide brought us to a cheap and delicious canteen where old Hungarian people eat lunch.  You will never go hungry in Hungary (haha) since there is quite a lot of good, cheap food.  John ate the famous goulash soup but I wasn't a huge fan of it!

Hanging out at Fisherman's Bastion

The best thing we did in Budapest was visit the Szechenyi Baths.  Budapest has several bath houses, but this one was the biggest and most popular.  It was built in 1913 (100 years ago!) and is actually the largest medicinal bath in Europe.  It is open all year round, and we definitely got some frosty feet running from the building to the outdoor bath area.  Not all the baths were outdoors, as the complex was huge and had a variety of pools indoors at varying temperatures (cold, warm, hot) and some pools even contained special minerals.  There was definitely one that smelled quite like sulphur!  The coolest thing was at night when they turned on some crazy coloured lights in the main outdoor pool and the centre of the pool became like a whirl pool.  You could catch the current and be whirled around the centre walled-in pool... the current was a lot more powerful then you'd expect!  It was lots of fun going around and around.  We stayed at the bath all afternoon and into the evening.  Good times!

Szechenyi Baths

 The last evening in Budapest we decided to check out a "ruin bar" on the recommendation of the people who worked at our guesthouse.  Ruin bars seem to be unique to Budapest.  They are bars which exist in old, run-down buildings.  People decide to take these abandoned buildings and turn them into cool bars that are kind of secret.  From the street, it just looks like a random ghetto building with a small sign outside.  We went to the most famous one, and it was quite nondescript from the street.  Inside it was full of some interesting decor, lots of happy guests, and funky music.  We tried some Hungarian wine after our tour guide recommended it to us.  She said Hungarian wine is excellent but Hungary does a terrible job of marketing it, so no one knows about it.  It was great!

Hungarian wine!

One great thing about going to Hungary was that it allowed me to reach my goal of 30 countries before 30!!!  A few months back, I didn't think reaching this goal was going to happen.  I had almost given up, but a random decision to travel to Europe for Christmas (something I've wanted to do for a long time!) ended up allowing me to hit up a bunch more countries.  On this trip I visited 4 new countries:  United Arab Emirates, Czech Republic, Austria, and Hungary!!!  I love travelling!!!  :)