Budapest

Hey everyone! I just got back from Budapest early early yesterday morning, so I thought I would tell you a little about it.  We left Thursday evening after dinner and landed in Budapest around 11:45 p.m. We grabbed a cab that took us to our hostel.  When the cab pulled up to a dark corner on some random street in Budapest we all got a little worried. He backed up and stopped and told us we were there. We looked around and saw some buildings and stores but nothing that looked like a hostel. He insisted we were in the right place, but we just kind of sat there until he got out and walked us to the right door. He rang the call button, and they buzzed us up. We opened the huge wooden door and it closed behind and we were engulfed in darkness. There were no lights anywhere to be found, so we were kind of frozen in place for a minute or so until we started shuffling forward as a little connected group. We found a creepy spiral staircase and made our way up to the first floor where the sign on the outside said it was located. All of the sudden a long shadow crept across the floor in front of us and a scary looking man appeared and asked us if we were staying at the Goat Hostel. We were, so we followed him and finally made it inside, and it turned out to be a really nice like cozy place. The beds were actually super comfortable and they had internet access and TV and free breakfast, so if anyone is going to Budapest sometime in the future I definitely recommend the Goat Hostel! :)

We got up early the next morning and Steve, a new guy that was working, got us a map and circled everything we should see while we were there. We set out and started site-seeing and went in the extra opposite direction we should have been going to find the market. We ended up seeing a couple cool churches and other things before we found ourselves back on the street where the hostel was. We had gone in a complete circle! We headed in the direction we should have been going in the first place and found the market. It was a pretty cool place, and we all bought some paprika, which Hungary is famous for. We headed off across the Danube river next. There was so much to see in Budapest. We walked miles upon miles all around. We saw St. Stephen's Basilica where St. Stephen's right hand is kept, Parliament, the Fishermen's Bastion, the Chain Bridge, Buda Castle, lots of other churches, and all kinds of stores. We had a nice dinner for Tara's 21st birthday and then got lost going back to the hostel. We eventually found our way and went to bed at a decent hour so that we could have a good part of our last day to see things.

The next day we walked to Hero's Square and found another castle that was having some sort of festival thing. There were food vendors and tons of little booths and even an ice-skating rink. We continued around the festival and got some cotton candy and huge soft pretzels.  We had to make our way back to the hostel to catch a cab back to the airport for our evening flight.  We got the airport and found out that our flight got delayed FOUR hours. So, we had almost six hours to hang out at the airport since we had gotten there a couple hours before our flight was supposed to take off. Finally, at 11:30 we were able to board the plane and fly back to Rome!