Hungary

After 10 days apart, we were more than ready to meet up again and head out on our next adventure. As luck would have it, we didn't have to wait long! Less than 24 hours after I arrived back in Saltaire from Dublin, we departed for Hungary!

Budapest is actually two cities - Buda and Pest - which are separated by the Danube. Buda is very hilly, whilst Pest - where we stayed - is totally flat. For our first night we stayed in a really cool hostel - Aventura Boutique Hostel - where we slept in the "African" dorm. So cool!! If you're looking for a great place to stay in Budapest, we recommend it! Our first night we wandered around the streets (after taking the train into town from the airport), took a stroll along the Danube - which looked really beautiful with the House of Parliament lit up on one side, and the Buda Castle Palace on the other. Majestic! :)

Finding appropriate vegetarian food in Hungary wasn't the easiest thing in the world - though it probably would have helped if we spoke even two words of Hungarian, naturally. Nonetheless, we found a great street cafe for breakfast - complete with blankets and pillows at their outdoor tables - before we really got into exploring the city. We walked around for quite a while, but as I had hurt my feet pretty badly my last day in Ireland, Court took pity on me and we decided to do a guided city tour. In hindsight, this was an excellent call - as previously mentioned, Budapest is two cities in one, so there is a lot of ground to cover. Additionally, the tour provided information about important monuments/locations which we would not have learned otherwise (given that we only had three days). The city tour also helped us to better understand the layout of the area and make a gameplan for things we wanted to see the next day - thank YOU, 48-hour hop on, hop off tickets!

That evening we moved from our hostel to a hotel, as we were joining a super discounted Top Deck tour. (We booked the tour while we were in Loch Ness because we knew our time was winding down and we wanted to do some more exploring before heading home for the holidays. This tour was perfect because on top of its super-low price tag, it went to places neither of us had been before - hooray! - and was heavy on history and culture. The only downside was that we were joining a group that had already been travelling together for 3+ weeks. And let me tell you...some of them were not exactly welcoming...)

On our third day in Budapest we hopped back on the bus and headed over to Heroes' Square. Directly behind it is Vajdahunyad Castle, a beautiful area with gorgeous grounds - the perfect place for a wander on a sunny autumn day. Our goal was to take some photos - which we did in spades - before making our way down the street to the famed House of Terror. More on that in a little bit...