Ah! I can't believe this is still here!! I've been home recuperating from a surgery during the last week after being gone for another prior week to Budapest and Prague, and I was wishing that I had made some kind of journal for my trip... and I suddenly remembered I had this!! So cool. Since I have the time, I'm going to try to recount the memories I made during this last trip that gave me the travel bug again. It really doesn't help that I've been cooped up and impatient to get better!! I'm thinking I want to go to Ireland by myself next time... driving through the rolling hills, checking out the castles... Ah!! I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway! My trip.
I had gone over Grace's house the night before and slept over because we were leaving from JFK, so that morning we got up and had brunch with Stevie and her dad. Her dad was so fun! He seemed to be in such a good mood--I think it's because of their new house they just bought. We went to a little Korean restaurant where everything was out of stock haha but we had great noodle soups. And then off we went to the airport!
The plane ride was uneventful--it was a long 10 hours flight to Istanbul (tiny little airport from what it looked like... but we found out more on the way back), then a 2 hour flight to Budapest. I read a lot ("Switch" by Dan Heath & Chip Heath--great book!!) and slept a lot. By the end of the flight, we were so glad to be in Budapest.
This was when we first got onto the plane, hence the excited faces that disappeared over the duration of the flight haha
When we got to Budapest, first thing we did was go to our hotel and sleep!! It was 8 AM at that point, so we napped until 1 PM and forced ourselves to get up. Our little hotel was clean but nothing fancy, and was next to Heroes Square, a beautiful monument dedicated to... heroes... of some sort... (Should've found some more information. whoops)
It was beautiful! There was even a little park next to it, so we explored that area first.
Museum? We were a little jet lagged heh.
Then we went to the LONG AWAITED and LONG SOUGHT AFTER baths!! Grace and I were so so excited about this.
Tell me that isn't just BEAUTIFUL!
Grace and I hadn't planned a lot of this trip, but we knew one thing was for sure--we needed to go to the baths in Budapest, and it was so great. It took us a little while to figure out the lockers (with these fancy watches they gave us to lock them up), but once we were in the water, it was great. Budapest is called the "City of Baths" because there are a lot of thermal springs under the city, so this giant outdoor pool was heated naturally. It was a little chilly outside, but it was perfect under the water. Inside the building were even more pools and saunas too! It made me think of my beloved King Spa that I love going to in Jersey, but this one had a lot more history behind it. We didn't want to leave, but we were getting hungry, so we left around 6 PM.
We ended up wandering into another castle, and it was really beautiful. I just wish I knew more about what I was seeing!
Then we went to the local supermarket to buy some bread, cheese, cold cuts, chips, and apples for dinner--and it came out to 6 AMERICAN DOLLARS! For both of us!! We began to love Budapest because of how cheap everything was.
We needed a late night adventure to the mall because we didn't have an outlet converter, so we walked to the West End Mall. The streets were pretty quiet (around 9 PM), but I felt really safe the whole time. Grace was a little nervous at first, but then she began to feel the same way. On the way, we saw this beautiful train station (actually, we got lost but I didn't want to admit it ha but worth it!!).
We successfully found our outlet changer (yay!!) and began our friendship with the mall that we got to know pretty well over the next few days ha (you can take the girl our of Jersey, but you can't take the Jersey out of the girl). And then off to bed we went!
No comments:
Post a Comment