May 19: Budapest ~sans professors~

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May 19

Let me just say: I’m so happy I got a letter train ticket out of Budapest. Victoria, Grayson, and I spent the day trekking around the historic Buda side of the city. We left the hotel well before most of the others had managed to get to breakfast. We walked to the old Jewish Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter and looked around that area for a while, and when we were done we took the hop-on-hop-off there to the Citadel. The Citadel is a monument on the top of one of the many large hills on the Buda side of the city. Our bus took us about 4/5 of the way up the side of the hill, and then we had to walk the rest of the way. Even that last 1/5 really got to me and I was out of breath by the end of the hike. But he views from the top of the citadel made it worth it. We had an amazing view of the entire city. Incoming fun fact: our taxi driver from the other night told us that the statue was the Soviet response to the Statue of Liberty. 

From the citadel we hiked down the mountain to an open air market that was selling nicknacks and food. The three of us are our first goulash and I have to say that it was absolutely delicious. It was beef goulash in a bread bowl, and was prepared in a massive skillet. 

From there we didn’t really walk to anything, we just wandered the historic city and admired the architecture and people. The buda side of the city was gorgeous and anyway we turned we encountered another beautiful street lined with historic buildings. 

To leave Buda we walked across the historic white chained bridge to get to Parliament. By then our legs were starting to feel like actually jello in a bag. So we walked toward the central train station to catch our train back to Vienna. We were just walking the shortest way back and we ran across a beautiful cathedral in the middle of our path. 

We finally made it to the train station after a much needed Starbucks stop. Then we managed to somehow figure out which train was ours, and then we managed to sit ourselves down in this sweet old lady’s seat. She was very kind to us though and explained that international train tickets don’t require you to reserve a seat, which seemed a little odd to me but I’ll just let he ÖBB do its thing. 

On the train ride, I slept for most of it. Until a large police officer woke us up for our passports. Mine was in my locked bag above me so I started to panic and make a scene while I tried to get my passport. In my confusion, I forgot I also had Lucas’s passport in my bag. I handed Lucas’s passport to the officer and he cleared me and went on his way. Apparently I look enough like Lucas to fraudulently use his federal identification. 

Anywho, when we got to Vienna we took a train home and we took a nap for a solid chunk of time. When we woke up, we decided it wasn’t worth going back out. After that I spent the night organizing my souvenirs and pics in my phone.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 13, 2018 at 9:23 AM

    WOW! If I had handed an officer somebody else's passport I would still be in jail!! Lucky you!

    ReplyDelete

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