It's 4:30pm here in Rome and I'm just waking up. Liz and I left our hostel in Budapest this morning at 4am to catch a taxi to the airport for our 6am flight. It was about as fun as you'd imagine it to be. It's taking a lot for me to go ahead and write this entry simply because I'm still exhausted and want to go back to bed, but I need to write this before I forget how amazing the weekend was.
We arrived in Budapest (pronounced 'Budapescht') Friday morning around 9am and found our hostel quite easily after a 20 minute train ride. We stayed at the Carpe Noctem hostel, which has about a 98% satisfaction rating on HostelWorld.com, so we figured it'd be awesome. Well, I guess some could consider it awesome if they wanted to be drunk or high the entire time they were there (which there were many in that state). I'll keep the hostel complaints/description limited, but let's just say we never really knew who the owners were the whole time we were there, one girl that we did know worked there decided doing sexual things with a carrot would be funny, Liz woke up to one of our roommates having sex with another (nasty) guy at the hostel (I was awake but was unaware this was happening because I had my trusty earplugs shoved in my ears), and the towels smelled like wet dog. Other than that, it was a good time. :)
Friday we decided to hike up to the top of the Citadella hill which has the best view of Budapest you can get for free. It was quite a hike and I think Liz and I made it even harder for ourselves because we just wanted to hurry up and get up there so we took cut thrus that ended up being a straight incline. The view was just as amazing as everyone said it'd be. It was definitely worth it. Liz has a better picture of me up there, so I'll wait for her to upload hers.
After the Citadella, we hiked back down and walked by some of the major sights in Budapest including the Great Synagogue and State Opera House. On the way back to the hostel we grabbed lunch at a place called Al-Amir and got the best gyros in town. One thing I particularly loved about Budapest was the abundance of different ethnic foods. That's one thing I wished Rome had more of. We also decided to be a little gluttonous and got waffles with chocolate pudding in the middle (quite a different taste from the typical spread of Nutella).
We headed back to the hostel to rest for a little while and get ready for our first Hungarian meal. We headed out for dinner around 8pm and went to Pesti Vendeglo, which was written about in the book I bought about Budapest. It said something like this was a good place to go for those having Hungarian for the first time, so it sounded perfect. I got a dish that had roasted piglet, steamed red cabbage, and potato wedges. It was such a dense meal. Neither Liz nor I could finish our plate! But it was delicious and very different than anything else I'm used to.
After dinner we went to another place my book mentioned, a jazz club called Fat Mo's. We were both exhausted so we didn't stay very long, but we did get to see a woman eat from her birthday cake that was a man's crotch. It was highly entertaining.
Friday night was the excellent night where Liz woke up to the sex happening right above her. Poor girl. That's all I feel like saying right there.
Saturday we left the hostel around 10am and headed to an outdoor cafe for breakfast. I got a cappuccino and french toast. The french toast was literally deep fried. It was great, but a little too heavy for breakfast. The great thing about many of the restaurants in Budapest is they all provide fleece blankets to their guests that sit outside. It was very nice!
After breakfast we decided to catch one of the hop-on/hop-off buses, although we never hopped on or hopped off. It was a good way to see the remaining sights that we hadn't seen yet. It was pretty chilly sitting on top of the open-air bus with the freezing cold wind, but we did it anyway.
After the bus tour, we met up with my friend Adam who worked at Camp Harrison last summer. He was born and raised in Budapest, so it was great to be with someone who was so familiar with the area. We went to lunch at a small cafe and then headed over to the
House of Terror museum. It was an awesome museum. Highly recommend it to anyone going to Budapest.
Next we headed to a bar/cafe called something in Hungarian that meant the "hole" bar. It was a bar dug into the ground. Pretty cool. There was a band setting up to play later that night so we got to hear their sound check and a couple of their songs. Once they started charging people to get in for the concert, we left and went to a bar with one of Adam's friends. He took us to his favorite spot called the Library on his university's campus. It was a small, underground bar with another decent band playing Cake cover songs. Once we'd had a few beers there (including some awesome Czech beers) we headed to yet another bar that Adam and his friend, David referred to as a "ruin bar" simply because it looks like it could be ruins. It was in a run down building and the bar basically consisted of wooden tables and chairs in a big empty room with cement walls and cement floors. We met up with another one of their friends there. After a few more beers there it was definitely time for bed. We knew we had to get up at 4am, so we said our goodbyes and headed back to the hostel. Adam prebooked a taxi for us so we wouldn't have to worry about it in the morning... And sure enough the taxi was waiting outside for us when we got up this morning!
All in all, it was a great trip. I'm so glad I got to get out of Rome. I'd been getting pretty sick of sitting in the apartment every weekend so this was a nice, refreshing change. We'll be leaving for Dublin, Ireland on Friday for another crazy weekend!
Now that I’ve brought up the haunting word “hostel” let me tell you about our slightly less than wonderful Irish hostel experience. From the ratings on hostelworld.com this place looked decent and was a good price for some of the other shabby hostels in Dublin, so that’s the only reason we booked it. It’s called Litton Lane Hostel and is on Litton Lane (imagine that!). It was once an old recording studio where bands like The Cranberries, U2, and Van Morrison recorded some of their albums, which was a cool piece of history to the building. There were lots of wall paintings attributing to its old musical days, but that was about the only cool thing about this place, except for the fact that the only DVDs they had available for rent were Top Gun and Hostel (hmm, seems a little inappropriate). 
Besides the horrible weather and hostel, Dublin was a great trip. We hit all of the typical tourist spots including Trinity College, The Book of Kells, Chester Beatty Library, Temple Bar, and Guinness Storehouse. We also ate some different ethnic cuisines such as Thai (my first Thai experience) and Mexican. Let me just go ahead and say that if any of you are planning on going to Ireland anytime soon, make sure your wallet is full of cash. Everything is pricey. Our dinners ran us about 18-20 euro each… And that’s just for one dish and some tap water.
I’m definitely glad I hit the British Isles while in Europe, especially towards the end, because it was so nice being able to speak English and carry on conversations with locals. It got me excited for my return home in approximately 17 days!
