Budapest - Days 2 and 3

Day 2

On the second day of our trip we went to the House of Terror, a museum in the building that formerly housed two terrorist dictatorships in the 1940s and 50s- first the Hungarian Nazis and then the Soviet-backed Communists. One person from every third family was seized, mistreated, or crippled under these regimes.

After our history lesson, we spent the rest of the day walking the streets and bridges of Budapest, watching boats float down the Danube, and enjoying an authentic Hungarian meal for dinner.

Mmmm...Hungarian goulash and potatoes. Like everything else we ate in Hungary, it was rather salty, over-seasoned, and brown. We went with the mushroom goulash because the only other option was gizzard goulash and that would have been a little too adventurous.


Day 3

We started Saturday with a run around Margaret Island - an island in the middle of the Danube between Buda and Pest. After a quick lunch we went to a thermal bath to relax.

This was the main pool of the Gellert baths where men and women can bathe together. There were also thermal baths that were gender-specific. The thermal baths had several pools of water of various temperatures and a steam room. Pictures were not allowed inside of the thermal baths because clothing was optional.

This is us happy and relaxed after soaking in the multiple hot tubs for 4 hours.

Budapest - Day 1

We both had a long weekend off for the 4th of July so we decided to take a trip to Budapest. We had been wanting to go to Budapest for a while and it finally seemed like a good opportunity. It was sort of a last minute decision so we didn't plan as much as we usually we do. Our preparation was nothing more than packing some clothes in a bag and grabbing our Lonely Planet Eastern Europe book.

We arrived on the morning of Thursday, July 2nd. After finding a hostel and dropping our stuff off, we set out to see the sights.

Our first stop was St. Stephen's Basilica. Notice the absence of tourists, or anyone else for that matter. Always suckers for a good view, we went up to the dome in the center and walked around the outside.

Elevators are for wimps, we took the cool spiral staircase.

Budapest from above.

The city is made up of two distinct areas, Buda on the west side of the Danube River and Pest to the east. We stayed in Pest, the flatter side with more buildings. Buda is more hilly and residential and we spent plenty of time there too. Nine bridges connect the two sides and we walked across four of them.

A view of Parliament from the Buda side.