Budapest

After the bus fiasco we got into Budapest late. We wandered around the bus station looking for a metro or anything to get us even just close to our hostel. I finally decided to just get an uber and go.  When we arrived the map was telling us our hostel was somewhere we couldn't possibly get to from the street so we wandered around the area searching for a way in. Looking a mess I'm sure. A random woman smoking a cigarette stopped me to ask if I was looking for a hostel. It seemed super weird but I said yes and she took us to a door with no signs for our place on it and told us it was on the 2 floor and left. Super weird but super accurate. We were finally able to check in. We met a Canadian guy named Erik in our dorm who made us laugh and asked him if he wanted to do a walking tour the next day. Then got into bed to pass out. As I was about to get into my sheets a man came in and looked so mad at me. Just staring straight into my soul like he hated me more than anything. I asked him 'what's up' and he motioned for me to go away. I asked 'is this your bed' and he once again tried to get me to leave and started yelling 'no at me over and over'. Erik looked up and said that he had been there earlier and just hadn't put any stuff down. So I told the dude I would move and he could have the bed but just chill out. He looked at the bed disgusted and picked up a hair (that was obviously not mine) and stared at me as he dropped it off the bed in the most over the top way possible. So I moved all my stuff and jumped to the next bed and passed out to the sound of him vigorously trying to clean off the bed. 

We tried to go on the walking tour but when we woke up it was crazy rainy and hard to feel like doing much. We walked to 'the meeting point' but according to the map (and me) we were not in the right place and we were too late. On our way back we stopped for some terrible coffee and chatted. 

Back home the majority of my diet consists of bean and cheese burritos and I had been craving one BAD since I had been in Europe. But they are heavily deprived of Mexican food so I had been on the look out. The night before when we had first arrived we had walked around a little to try to gain some grounding. I felt something staring and me, I turned to the right and not 2 feet away from me was a sign for burritos! I was so beyond excited but it was closed. So after a disappointing lack of walking tour we decided to cheer our selves up with burritos. It was one of the best bean and cheese burritos I've ever had. She put in as much cheese as beans and it was so big around I HAD to use two hands. Oh happy happy day. 

After a nap we decided to try the afternoon walking tour where we had and awesome spunky Hungarian guide who took us around the city and taught us soo much history. 

That morning we had met two Americans while eating breakfast. And when we got back that evening they invited us to go to the ruin bars with them and some other people. Ruin bars are essentially a bar on acid. It's and old abandoned building that they set up different drink shacks, shots over here, beers over there, ect. Then there are different rooms for dancing or sitting or rooms filled with plants and so much more. Then the entire place is filled with random graffiti, sculpture, lights, and pretty much whatever they wanted. It felt like Alice in wonderland for bars. And it was amazing! I spent the first part of the night exploring all the rooms and art and the second half talking to one of the Americans about his travels. Then broke it down on the dance floor. 2 different ruin bars and a gyro later. It had been a successful night. 

The next day we decided to explore the city ourselves. You meet so many people out here that a lot of the time you end up remember people by the place they are from and forgetting (or never knowing) their name. In Budapest we almost all called each other exclusively by our place. So Cali, salt lake(me), Oregon,  Australia, Canada, and erik(who was also from Canada) headed out to get lost in the city. We explored churches, coffee houses, underground tunnels, but mostly just the streets. 

We went for lunch at a noodle house and ended up staying there talking and making each other tinder profiles then playing match maker for each other and laughing our heads off for 3 or 4 hours before we finally decided we should give up our table. We wanted to go see a movie but after we found out they were only in Hungarian and they had no way to give us English subtitles we decided it wasn't quite worth it and got some amazing gyros.  At home pretty much everyone else had been drinking for quite a while and was already pretty whacky. After a few card games a British guy who finished a whole bottle of vodka threw up in his bed. I was over the whole drunken mess so I went to bed.  

The must do thing in Budapest is the bath houses. They pump geothermal water from the earth up into different sized and temperatured pools. They are AMAZING! The locals say they have healing powers. We went to the biggest bath house and there was SO MANY pools. 2 huge ones outdoors, one had a small lazy river in the middle (that we played in first), it was a cold morning when we got there so there was so much steam from the pools you could barely see around you. Inside there was about 30 pools. Ranging in size and temperature. There was size cold plunge pools next to jacuzzi hot pools. You were meant to go back and forth quickly between the two. Apparently at least some of the healing properties are true because I had blood blisters that completely went away during this process. They had so many warm relaxing pools that we tried all of. And multiple sauna rooms. My personal favorite was the large oval pool that had tons of jets pushing you around in a circle.  Essentially it was a whirl pool and you could zip around it so fast. We spent so long racing around. After the pools we were so hungry we got a delicious burger place right outside of the bath house. When we got back to the hostel we tried to plan stuff and get things done but we all ended up falling asleep on the table and called it a night. 

At this point in the trip I had a pretty heavy cough and cold (I guess the baths can't heal everything) and everyone had left that morning or the night before (bye Andy!) so I decided to take a rest day to try to heal. After sleeping the majority of the day my bottom bunk mate from turkey asked me if I wanted to make food with him. So we went to the market and got food that he insisted on cooking all of. We had eggs with peppers and tomatoes, bread, fries that he insisted I dip in yogurt, popcorn and a chocolate bar. I guess he took me agreeing to cook as a sign we were in love because for the rest of the night he called me 'my love', 'honey', 'babe' ect. So after telling him that was very wrong I spent the rest of the night hiding from him while packing and getting ready to leave that later night. 

I had been chatting with James and decided to meet in Rome so I purchased my ticket and left at 4 am to the airport. 

I loved the architecture and beauty of the city Bye Budapest!