Hungary, check.

So last week, one of roommates, Molly, decided to hope of to Madrid to visit some friends from highschool, so I made the suggestion to my two other roomies that we should go somewhere, so as to not spend another weekend sitting around the apartment, catching up sleep. We decided on Budapest, which is a only a short 3-hour train ride from Vienna. So we booked the train on Wednesday, the hostel on Thursday night, and left the city just after noon on Friday.

So when we arrived at the train station in Budapest, there were people EVERYWHERE, all pushing and shoving and speaking in a language we can no where near understand. After about 20 minutes of pure confusion, we recognize the fact that we need to change money, which was strange, seeing as a Hungarian Forint is about 300 to 1 euro--trying to calculate bills and what not in your head with numbers that high was just a weird experience. Now that we had the right currency, we found our way to the Metro, and then wandered some side streets, finally finding our hostel, which turned out to be great! Our "room" was basically bigger then our apartment, complete with living room, dining room, kitchen and free internet. After the cheapest and most delicious and large meal in a while (everything in Budapest was about half the price it is here in Vienna), my travel partners immediately made use of this free internet access business, while I rummaged through the bookshelves in the common room, finding a "Best of Eastern Europe" book by my new favorite travel writer and person, Rick Steves. After staying up for a while reading it, I had our whole next day planned out. We started out eating breakfast in

a cafe that is apparently "the place to be seen" in Budapest. It looked pretty fancy, and touristy, so I was a little nervous that it 

would be expensive, but it was actually way cheaper than any cafe of the caliber in Vienna. I had this chocolate croissant that was literally the size of my face, not only topped but filled with

 chocolate, and it was about 0,90 euro. We then proceeded to walk down the Vacy Utca, basically the shopping street where everyone rips you off, so you don't buy anything. The street ended in the Great Hall market, which was 3 floors--one with all kinds of spices, fruits and veggies, one with souvenirs, and another with tanks full of still-swimming fish and lot's of hanging slabs of unidentifiable meat. 

Leaving he market, we crossed from the Pest side of the Danube (the same river that runs through Vienna) to Buda. Rick Steves was sure to explain that Budapest was once 3 different

cities, Buda, Obuda, and Pest--all their powers combining to create what it is today. From here, 

we went inside of a church that was built inside of a cave, saw many statues (Like this one here of St. Steven), and climbed lots of stairs up all of the hills in Buda. We then made our way to Castle Hill, where several lines of rulers lived over the last few hundred years. We'd been 

walking around for nearly 5 hours by this point, so we sat to enjoy yet another coffee and then proceeded to explore some the residential streets one the other side of Castle Hill. By this time, the sun was getting low in the sky, so we decided to start making our way back to the hostel so as to take a little nap and inquire from the reception a good place to eat dinner. Walking down the river walk to Budapest's most famous "Chain Bridge", I look around at all the landmarks and realize that they've started turning all of the lights on, and according to all the books I'd read and all of my friend's who'd  already been here, Budapest at night is a MUST SEE. So we start walking across this beautiful bridge, and the sky is getting darker and darker and more and more lights are turning on and I am just in complete awe. I just love the nighttime, is what I've realized, especially seeing the lights from a city. It took us nearly an hour to cross this relatively short bridge because I kept stopping to just admire everything and take it all in. Needless to say, it was a great little ending to our really great day of exploring.

The next day, we ventured out down Andrassy utca--one of the busiest streets in Budapest--and found a nice cafe where once again, everything was extremely cheap. The total was less than 10 Euro for the three of us. After breakfast, we hopped on the oldest metro on 

the continent (thank you Rick Steves) and went down to City Park, where there was yet another castle, Hero's Square, and probably miles of winding paths through trees and fountains and a stand after stand of snacks--we choose giant pretzels and mulled wine to warm up a little.

While we had a great time exploring a new city, and I know I've said this before, but it's always really great coming home to Vienna...I like being able to call Vienna home--at least for the time being.