After a delightful 8 hour bus ride through the Tatra Mountains, we arrived at our hostel just in time to be swarmed by the departing crowd of backpackers heading off on the 'Booze Cruise' - this was a pretty accurate first impression of Budapest, where there is a huge party every single night of the week.
We went on our obligatory free walking tour on our first day and were blown away by the beauty of Budapest. Budapest is divided by the Danube into two regions - Buda and Pest. The Buda side has some amazing castles and forts, while the Pest side has some great parks and of course, the ruin bars and clubs.
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| St. Stephen's Basilica |
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| Musical fountain on Margaret Island. Photo taken by a couple walking their pet ferret. Possibly the highlight of our time in Budapest. |
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| Budapest skyline - photos don't do it justice! |
Budapest is renowned for being a huge party town, and the best bars are called 'ruin clubs'. These are awesome bars that are in old condemned buildings that are hidden away in different little hidey holes in Pest. Needless to say, there were a few large evenings at these bars while we were in Budapest, and lots of mustaches.
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| As our new friend Jonas tells us, you are never alone with a mustache. It brings more attention than some can handle. And it tickles your nose. |
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| Mustaches can be applied to various surfaces, including $1 beers. |
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| Jonas and Tom chillin' with their mos |
Our love affair with food in Eastern Europe continued in Budapest. We stumbled across yet another festival while we were there that was another street lined with food and wine stalls. Unfortunately, the quantity of free tastings was not up to Vilnius' effort, but I am willing to forgive this minor indiscretion. We also managed to get trapped inside a horse race around the Heroes Monument near the festival... Yes that's right, we were being circled by horses for an hour unable to escape. Lucky the horse race was pretty entertaining.
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| Hot cinnamon funnel cake... hell yes! I look like a serial killer, but the funnel cake is really the star of this photo so just ignore that. |
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| For those of you who heard the tale of Tom's encounter with the club sandwich at Lucky Day in Bali: never fear, we have found a far more sanitary sister restaurant in Budapest! |
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| Trapped by horses and peasants. First world problems. |
After 5 crazy nights in Budapest we headed off to Eger, which is a small town about 2 hours train ride from Budapest, for a mini 'holiday from a holiday'. Eger is a beautiful little medieval town that is renowned for it's red wine blend called 'Bull's Blood'. We have our own room AND our own bathroom (heaven!) AND a television. We had a degustation menu at one of Hungary's top 10 restaurants drinking wine made by Hungary's best winemaker, and the grand total of the bill was $60. Amazing! We have also checked out the Valley of Beautiful Women, where there are about 50 wine cellars lined up next to one another and you buy glasses of wine for anywhere from 40 cents to $1 a glass. Then we ate cheese. Lots of cheese.
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| Num num num Bull's Blood! Valley of Beautiful Women |
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| One of the cobblestone streets of Eger |
Tomorrow we are off the Bratislava in Slovakia, then Prague and Vienna to catch up with Scotty and Kate. So excited to see some familiar faces! We will be sure that Scotty and Kate feature on the next post :)
