Monday 24 February 2014

Winter spirit day 14-15 Budapest

Day 14: Vienna to Budapest via Bratislava
Today we had breakfast in Austria, lunch in Slovakia and dinner in Hungary!  We stopped at the castle in Bratislava to have a view over the city, before heading into the city for lunch. 
We walked through the streets to find a restaurant, and unfortunately couldn't find platzky, a delicious potato pancake the Slovak chef in England made for us. So good! I had dumplings with cheese and spek and it was ok.
We got back on the road to Budapest, where we met 13 more people at the hostel before heading on a driving tour of the city. We walked up to a view point next to a beautiful church that had a great view over the huge parliament next to the river.
Back at the hostel we got ready to head out to dinner, and after a 15 minute walk and a wait that felt like eternity, we got massive portions for dinner! I had crispy pork leg, and it seriously was a whole pork leg, with enough pasta to feed a small county. It was delicious though!
After dinner most of the group went out, but it was late so I went to bed instead.

Day 15: Budapest
Today we started off the day with a walk to the House of Terror. We learnt a lot about the history of nazi and soviet occupation of Hungary, as both the nazis and soviets used the building as headquarters. It was very intense and at the end of the museum you to down into the basement where they kept and executed many Hungarians. Most of the information was in Hungarian, but there were information sheets in English that had a lot of writing!
After that we walked over the the market, which took a lot longer than we thought it would, and met up with Maree. We couldn't find the food part of the markets, so went across the road to Burger King for lunch. After lunch we walked along to river to the castle, and after deciding the funicular was too expensive (it wasn't) we walked up the hill! The views from the top were amazing! We got to witness the changing of the guard, which was pretty cool, and also had a to at some archery.
We walked back to the hostel, back along the bridge that has 4 lions on each corner. It has a good story, when the bridge was unveiled, people wondered why the lions didn't have any tongues, and the architect was so embarrassed he forgot the tongues that he jumped off the bridge. Luckily he didn't die, because they found out the tongues were just not in view, on the bottom of the lions mouths!
We found a Thai noodle in a box place for dinner and I got the hottest sauce they had, which may have been a mistake (but it was delicious anyway). I bought a bottle of peach shnapps to try and use up our forints, and had a few drinks at the bar, and had some impromptu sing alongs.

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