Day 9: Buda...Pest (to the tune of Go...Blue)

Today I slept in because everyone wanted to get breakfast at 9:30. The food was not as good as the hotel in Koblenz, but it was still decent and free. Afterwards we went to check out the Turkish baths. While my room was really close to the entrance, we couldn’t figure out how to interact with the elevator attendant in order to get to them. It was frustrating, but fine. I then packed up my things and went to meet others for more sight seeing.

We stored our things with the rest of the group’s, and Christine, Steph and I headed to the castle district on the other side of the river from Parliament. This area was across from Parliament and separated from the city by the river. We originally planned to take the cable car to the top, but decided to hike up the path instead, in order to save our Forint for lunch. It wasn’t a bad hike, and the castle area was worth the effort. There were breathtaking views of the city everywhere we went.

The castle was interesting as well, as it was also a church. For the third time in Budapest we were turned away by the front door because mass was going on in the church. This led us to explore other areas of the city until we found a small café with reasonable prices. We got unloaded the rest of our Hungarian currency on some pizza and salads. I had cold chicken breast and yogurt, with a watered-down local wine…the meal was by far the least enjoyable of the week, but there are still 20 days left to find something to top it. After we ate, we grabbed some gelato for desert as we still had some Forint to get rid of. Of course we enjoyed it in a slight drizzle, which we hope is the last of the rain for a while (It has rained every day since we have arrived).

Steph in front of the mountain top castle/church

We climbed down the mountain and returned in time for the bus to leave for Bratislava. I took the two hour journey to catch up on some rest, but woke up for the highway view through the city.

We arrived at our hotel around 7:00, and a group of us immediately went exploring. We took a nice walk around the suburban area, but didn’t find much of anything that was too exciting. We returned around 8:30 to meet everyone for dinner. At first we tried to get bus tickets to get into the city, but when we failed to figure the system out, we spilt up and a few of us went to the local pizzeria. Here we found the prices to be about half what they had been the past few weeks, and the beer was cheaper than the soft drinks. The average price of a local beer was .75€, which is incredible. It tasted pretty good, and it was nice to relax after we finished eating by watching the Slovakia-Russia hockey game.

Most importantly, happy mothers day, Mom! I love you, and I hope all is well at home!