Budapest (Day 2)

I must be almost caught up because I'm actually writing about things that went on today. Yay. Exciting.

Anyway, I love Budapest. It's definitely one of my favorite cities, definitely of Europe and possibly in general. I thought returning would be disappointing, but the city is just as cool the second time around and I still have yet to try out one of the famous thermal baths.

Because of our late night last night, we got up relatively late. Rather, James, Mia and I got up late. Halmony always gets up early and Umma had to get up early to give the hotel people our laundry (so glad to have clean clothes again). We didn't leave the hotel until around 11, and then we were hungry. We discovered that there was McDonalds relatively nearby and decided to lunch there.

Now, I will defend overseas McDonalds trips for many reasons. First, the restaurants (for the most part) tend to be significantly nicer than they are in the States. This one had free WiFi. Depending on where you are, you also tend to be eating with more of the locals. You won't get this feeling at the McDonalds near the Spanish Steps, for instance, but when you're in not-so-touristy areas of a city like we were today, you end up hearing more of the local language. Also, McDonalds tends to change its menu when you're abroad. For instance, today I got a Greek sandwich that actually had a bit of that kebob-y taste to it. Anyway, that was kind of a random side tangent, but I always think it's kind of fun to go to McDonalds abroad even though I very rarely eat it at home.

Once we were done with lunch, it was finally time for some sight seeing. Our first stop of the day was the Great Market Hall. This involved some winding around streets as well as dragging Umma away from touristy shops lining the touristy pedestrian street, Vaci Utca. Once we finally got to the market, I think Umma and Halmony were in their happy place. The Great Market Hall is an enormous marketplace in Budapest. It was apparently one of the four built in Budapest in 1896 (which was a big year for the city as it was their millenial year). This one remains as an incredibly large market that caters to both locals and tourists. We circled around the bottom floor for a while, which was more or less a farmers market. We passed a ton of fruit stalls and some meat stands. We even bought some nectarines to eat later.

We then explored the upper level, which really only has an insane amount of tourist stalls and some food stands. I finally got to try langos, which I've heard Rick Steves rave about in his podcasts and in his Eastern Europe guidebook. They kind of tasted like funnel cakes, but the concepts very similar to crepes, where you can order them with both sweet and savory toppings. We got a simple sugar one and were quite happy with it.

I'm pretty sure that we could have stayed around the Grand Market for much longer. We still hadn't even explored the basement floor, where there is even more food. However, we still had much to see, so we went outside and ate nectarines and got our bearings for a while before heading out. We took the tram over to the Chain Bridge and crossed the bridge by foot. If you're unfamiliar with the layout of Budapest, the city once consisted of two separated cities, Buda and Pest.  The Chain Bridge is this massive bridge that crosses the Danube and connects the Buda portion of the city with the Pest side (we'd so far been on the Pest side). It's pretty fun to walk across if you're able to dodge all of the bikes that pass you.

Once we made it across, we took the funicular up the hill to get to the Buda Castle. Apparently, they're doing some major folk art festival up there, so we couldn't actually get into the surrounding palace area without buying a ticket to go to the festival. It's a pity too. You can get some great views of the city from the Buda Castle. We explored the Castle Hill area a little more, visiting St. Matthias Church and some other spots before deciding to head back down.

From there, I had planned to take a tram from the chain bridge to the Metro line that would take us under the Danube and back to the Pest side. Turns out that tram that I wanted to take was out of service until September so we had to walk. It actually went by faster than I thought it would. In any case, we took the Metro to our last sight seeing stop of the day, Heroes Square. I said before that 1896 was a big year of the city and Heroes Square is further evidence of that. It was built as part of the major celebration to commemorate the 1000 years since the Magyars first arrived in Hungary. In that square is the Hungarian War Memorial as well as statues memorializing many of the most famous Hungarian leaders. It's a pretty epic square. We sat around there for a little while, until a cricket bit Umma and we got chased away by a bee. We may or may not have embarassed ourselves in front of many locals and fellow tourists.

By this time, it was running close to dinner time and our big task of the day was to surprise Halmony for her birthday with a Korean dinner. We had used the McDonalds WiFi earlier in the day to locate what Lonely Planet named the best Korean restaurant in Budapest. Unfortunately, it took us on this tour of what Mia said was the Inglewood of Budapest before we could actually find the restaurant. On the upside, we all got a glimpse of what I believe was the soccer stadium of Budapest. That was cool at least.

The Korean restaurant was interesting. The main people serving us there were these two big burly Hungarian men who did not look Korean or speak Korean and looked like they could have belonged to the Hungarian mafia. They were nice, but kind of intimidating. The food was pretty good. A lot more authentic than the place that we had gone to in Prague. It was, however, incredibly spicy. Moreso than normal Korean food. Even the kimchi was painfully but deliciously spicy. We all left utterly defeated by the spiciness of Hungarian Korean food and had to console ourselves with ice cream. At least the walk back wasn't as bad as the walk there.

After our trip to eat Korean food, we made our way back to the hotel and have been getting ready for our next day of travels. Umma, James, and Halmony are flying to Milan tomorrow. Mia and I take and overnight to Belgrade. I'm going to have to get rid of my beloved Rick Steves book because he doesn't cover any of the other stops we'll be going to. It'll be sad not carrying that around in my bag anymore, but at least my bag will be a little lighter. Before everyone leaves, we plan to try to go to Memento Park and eat some goulash. Mia and I will also try to find that Hungarian Mexican restaurant again for dinner.

Goodbye Luxury. Hello Prague!

The day that we disembarck a cruise ship is always a sad one. You leave the luxurious life where a buffett line is only feet away and go into a world where you suddenly have to pay for water, food and restrooms once again. Such was our day leaving the ship. We had an early disembarkation because we had early plane tickets from Copenhagen to Prague. This meant that we woke up around 5, rushed to try to eat while Oppa was stressing and then loaded up into the bus to get to the airport. I slept most of that ride.

Once we got to the airport, we ran into more issues. We had strategically packed all of our stuff so that the seven of us continuing to Prague would only have to check in one bag total. We were really excited about this and were about to check in until we discovered that we were only allowed one carry on. Total. That screwed things up, so we scrambled to combine some bags so that we wouldn't have to check all of our bags in and then redid everything. Mia and I will have to go through this scramble again on our Easy Jet flight from Bucharest to Milan, but I think we'll be a little better prepared by then.

In any case, the rest of the trip ran relatively smoothly. We said our goodbyes to Oppa and Chabba, only to run into Chabba again past the security gates. The flight was fine. I slept for most of it, but it was a pretty bumpy ride.

We arrived in Prague a little over an hour later and had to run around in search of ATM so that we could get money and a way to get from the Prague Airport to our hotel. We briefly thought about taking a bus, until we realized how hellish that would be with all of our luggage. Thus, we decided to go for the taxi ride. It's probably a good thing that we did, too, because it turned out that it was pouring rain in Prague. The taxi ride seemed wrong and our driver dropped us off in the wrong area. We were really only around the corner, but trying to run from where the taxi driver dropped us off to the hotel was a bit of an adventure. I can only imagine what it would have been like if we had to take public transport with all of our bags in the rain. It wouldn't have ended well.

Our hotel in Prague was kind of  cool because it shared my name. That's actually why Umma chose it. Turns out it wasn't really the greatest location (there were several sex shops in that area and a lot of shady looking folk) and the shower was awkward to use, but it kind of reminded me of a spacier version of my apartment in Florence, so I was happy in that respect. Also, we got to carry around a keychain with my name on it.

After regrouping for a while and drying off a little, we realized how hungry we were. Chris and Jimmy had eaten at the airport in Copenhagen to get rid of their remaining Danish crowns, but none of us had eaten since we were on the cruise ship early that morning and we were so hungry. We also wanted to surprise Halmony and eat at a Korean restaurant. Chris and I had both Googled K-restaurants in Prague and both came up with different ones. Mine was closer so we went with that first.

For some reason, we thought that the walk to the Korean restaurant would be walking distance in the rain. It wasn't. It was a long and very wet walk to the Korean restaurant. We finally got there and after getting whiffs of Korean BBQ, found out that the restaurant was closed until 5 pm. It was 4:15. Despite our imploring looks at the woman working there, we were unable to get in and decided to go to Chris's. His wasn't too far from where we were, but was still a good 10-15 minute tromp in the rain. When we got there, it turns out that the thing he found was not a Korean restaurant, but a Korean market. That wasn't so bad because there was a Korean restaurant around the corner. The woman let us in there as well, thinking that we were part of a tour group from Germany. When she found out that we definitely were not the people she was expecting, she told us that most of the restaurant had been reserved, but said we could sit in this table in the backroom. We barely fit in there and decided to go to the first place.

After the next round of Czech KBBQ ping pong, we made it to the first restaurant and found out that they too were expecting a large tour group. We must have looked pathetic because the guy eventually let us eat there as long as we were gone by six. Our presence really stressed this guy out and he paced around while we struggled to scarf down the food. It wasn't really the best Korean BBQ that I've had, but it was an interesting experience and we were famished. Halmony was happy, though, because it turns out that parts of the drama that she liked that took place in Prague was filmed there. Or something like that.

Since we were in the same general area, we decided to also try to get train tickets from Prague to Budapest at the Prague train station. Turns out that, like many other train stations, it was not an area fill of the sort of people you want to hang around with. It was all sorts of shady and we had to walk under sketchy tunnels to get to the station. The lady at the ticketing office was also kind of rude and scary. But, hey, I'm writing this entry up while in Budapest, so we must have gotten something right.

We decided to try to take the bus back because it would have been a killer walk back and Halmony looked beyond exhausted. We found the bus station but apparently didn't realize that we buy the tickets at kiosks outside of the bus. Instead, we just hopped on with everyone else and, after realizing that we could not pay on the bus, stood around awkwardly on the bus for a couple of stops before stressing and jumping out of the bus. We were really only one stop away anyway, so the rest of the walk wasn't too bad.

We got back around 8/9-ish. Chris and I circled around the general area for the laundry place that we were told was 300 meters from the hotel and were unsucessful. We saw what might have been a laundromat, but whatever it was, it was closed. We called it a night and a lot of us passed out relatively early.

All in all, our first night in Prague was kind of a bust. We spent a lot of it swimming through the less welcoming areas of town and, in retrospect, I think we felt more welcome in Christiana than we did in Prague that first night. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little.