About Budapest

Posted by Emily

Hey everyone! Just a quick update to let you know that I have't completely disappeared! We are currently in Bled, Slovenia, a BEAUTIFUL city near the Julian Alps. We spent the day hiking down a mountain and then had lunch overlooking the lake. Lovely. But more on that later. I'll do a quick run down of what we have been up to.

We started in Budapest, Hungary, as I'm sure you know from the only previous post. Again, LOVED the city. It's quite a large city but managable on foot because we were staying near the center. We say the large and beautiful Parliament building that overlooks the Danube, checked out the Museum of Ethnography which had exhibits on traditional Hungarian daily life and also, randomly, an exhibit on musical instruments from around the world. Continued walking and found St. Steven's Basilica, which was beautiful but at this point in the journey it's kind of just another church (and I haven't even been traveling that long!). One unique thing about the church is that it contains the mummified hand of St. Steven. It's in a gold and glass box and if you put an offering in it lights up. We waited until someone else did it. Also saw the opera house. Saturday afternoon we met up with our tour group and had dinner at a very local Hungarian restaurant where we tried some local alcohol shot thing (it was my mom's idea!) and had some lovely food.

Next day was a bike tour with most of the group. It was luckily a beautiful day and it was wonderful to explore the city on a bike. It's a lot faster than walking and much better than being on one of those stupid tour buses! The afternoon was spent at the one of the large thermal baths located near the city park. It had 3 warm outdoor pools, one for swimming laps and one with a whirlpool type thing in the middle (literally) because once you entered the entire group was pushed in a circle by the current. There were also several hot, warm in cool pools inside the building and a sauna. Very relaxing.

On Monday, pretty much everything was closed due to May Day and there was supposed to be a large celebration and parade put on by the socialist party who had just won the elections but unfortunately it was raining HARD. That didn't stop us from trying to see the castle district at first, but then after walking for quite a while and almost making it there, we decided it was too wet and miserable out. Sadly, we took the metro to the mall and walked around there. There was no where else open where we could stay dry! All the stores were closed though and we just ended up having lunch at a restaurant there.

That night, it was the overnight train to Sarajevo.