Buda Side

It was a slow-ish morning but by 11 we were on the road. The first day in a new city tends to be the Walking Day, and today we literally walked for seven hours. Not including the hour that we stopped for lunch...we were on our feet for seven hours. Exhausting!

In those seven hours though, we did quite a lot. We went to the Castle District, which is home to basically all of the attractions on the Buda side (most of the youthful, energetic city vibe is found on the Pest side). This means we went to the Buda Palace, saw the National Gallery, went to the Fisherman's Bastion, and saw the Mathias Church. From the top of the hill we could see all of Pest, including great views (in the great weather!) of the Parliament across the Danube River and the famous Chain Bridge.

Getting to the top of Castle Hill though was a little bit of an adventure. We walked alllll the way up the Buda side of the river, and we knew where the hill was, obviously, but we couldn't see a way to get up it. Finally I saw some stairs across the road, but as we got closer we saw a sign that said you couldn't climb the stairs to access the castle. So we kept walking. Then we found this train type thing that you could pay to take you to the top of the hill, but we thought - there must be a free way to walk up. So we walked under this exhaust-fumed-filled bridge to the back of the hill. There, it felt kind of like a video game. We would see stairs, walk up them, check out the view, look for more stairs, and just keep going up as long as we didn't hit any dead ends. So we finally made it to the top, but we really did do it entirely backwards. Weird.

The views were great but we didn't want to pay to go into anything, so there wasn't all that much to do. There was touristy stuff around, and I actually bought my plate super early! Exciting - now I don't have to worry about it for the rest of my time here. They also had a "make your own photo-postcard machine" which I'd never seen before and loved. The machine takes 6 pictures of you, and then you pick which picture you like the best. Then it puts that picture in the middle of 6 different postcards, and you pick which postcard you like the best. Then you can pay a lot of money ($3.5) and get a postcard to send to people. I'm sure this machine exists somewhere else but it was a first time thing for me. Laura and I played with it and did everything up to buying an actual postcard. Looking at the other touristy things was fun too. Even though you can tell their really overpriced and poorly made, it's still fun to see how these little trinkets change from country to country.

When we walked down from the hill, it was lunch time. After a bit more walking, I noticed a chalkboard with an advertisement for a "Napi Menu". Good thing I had read about Napi menus the day before!! They are the best thing ever! Napi means Daily, and the Daily menus are two or three course meals for REALLY, ridiculously cheap prices. So even though we couldn't understand what the menu items were, we decided to be both frugal and adventurous and took a seat at this little restaurant.

The waiters explained to us that the two courses were fruit soup (Whaaaat?!!) followed by fried turkey with rice and vegetables. Sold! Oh yeah, and this cost $4.5. Hungary is awesome.

Fruit soup was a huge adventure!! How have I never, ever heard of fruit soup before? It was like drinking a sugary, fruity broth with chunks of cherries, huckleberries, blackberries, strawberries, and who knows what other kinds of fruit in it. And it had whipped cream on the top. It really seemed like more of a dessert. Anyway it was really cool to try! It was funny because Laura and I were both a little skeptical after just hearing about it, but we're both huge fans now. The fried turkey was delicious and moist, and the rice with vegetables was really just thick rice with peas. We also tried a Hungarian beer, which like any local, cheap beer in a country not known for good beer, was terrible.

Then we decided to start the long walk back to Bernhard's place, since we didn't really have anything else to do. But somehow we ended up taking a wrong turn or following a wrong road, and ended up at the "Island Bridge". All the bridges here obviously have real names, but we have renamed the four main bridges: "Green Bridge", "White Bridge", "Famous Bridge", "Island Bridge". But we decided to cross Island Bridge, and get off halfway and go to Margaret Island (why we named it Island Bridge).

Margaret Island was amazing! It was like Green Lake, but - and I hate to say this - like a million times better. It's a WHOLE island, in the middle of northern Budapest, with practically no development on it, just runners, bikers, roller bladers, and walkers. It was amazing! Everybody there was being so healthy. And there were SO many people running it almost seemed like there was a marathon going on or something. It was crazy! And they have a track turf rubber lane that goes all the way around the island, since that is better material that cement or gravel to run on. But aside from that rubber lane, everything else is essentially au naturale. We found a couple of random statues, and there's a random water park, a hostel, and a petting zoo - some weird things! But really, mostly it was just people working out. And it's an island, duh, so there were also tons of kayakers in the water. So so so cool.

Finally we figured it was time to start the now even longer walk back to Bernhards. Sure enough, it took us a full two hours to get back there! But when we arrived, the Canadian girls were making pasta and garlic bread for everybody. What an awesome thing to come home to.

After a family dinner with the five of us (Hiro left in the afternoon), we played the longest game of Uno ever! Then, I spent a few hours looking up different things to do the rest of the week. It seems like there is so much to do here, and we are supposed to have great weather for most of our time here!


Quotes:
"I don't know." - Bernhard (this is his answer to 90% of our questions lol).

Accomplishments:
Shaved my legs! Woo!! Skirt time tomorrow!
Bough postcards & stamps finally.

Travel Tip:
Walking is a good way to get to know the city.