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.