Beautiful Downtown Budapest -- Day 1

After dropping our luggage off in our room (no pics -- pretty boring, looked like any random dorm room -- but there was air conditioning!) we headed out to explore Budapest.

Our hostel is Corvinus and it's right next to another hostel -- collectively, and aptly, they were called City Hostel Hill.  Hill being the operative word as we were at the top of it.

Down Menusi Üt (ME-noosh Oot) we came to Béla Bartok and turned left.  We knew we were about a quarter mile from the Danube (A Duna) so we just started walking.

There were more than a few restaurants/cafe type places -- almost all had Hungarian/English menus, so there was an immediate sense of relief on our (and by "our" I mean Melissa's) part. At least we knew what kind of new foods we'd be eating (and by "new foods" I mean pizza).

I am not sure what we expected from Hungary in general or Budapest specifically.  If you would have told me a a few years ago that I'd be in Budapest, my first reaction probably would have been to pack rice (Sally Struthers' style) and/or a flak jacket -- just had no clue what type of lifestyle/culture to expect. I guess I always pictured Hungary as an old woman walking down a dirt road in some type of burlap sack dress thing with like a bundle of sticks on her back.

Considering all of that, Budapest was quite the eye-opening experience. It's a beautiful city -- with many parts of it rebuilt several times over the centuries due to wars. It's strange because it feels really old -- even though a lot of the city was re-built in the last 60 years.  We hope to have a lot more experience in other major Euro-cities to compare Budapest to -- but at first blush, we were truly awestruck.




We actually had a great view of the city from our hostel and Melissa and I discussed whether or not if we woke up and had no idea where we were (it's happened before) would we think this city was just some random American city? I think the answer is a resounding no -- it just looks different.

Oh yeah, then we saw the One Euro Market and Melissa freaked out to go to the euro equivalent of the Dollar Store.  We bought towels (which we forgot to pack -- brilliant) and toilet paper.

We didn't stray too far -- we were just trying to stay awake after the plane trip and not get lost -- so we stayed on Béla Bartok for the afternoon/evening.  Finally after walking for what seemed like forever (it would turn out that this was by far the least we walked all week), we stopped to have our first drink.



We walked into the Nevada Pub. They had a street-side cafe, so we thought we could sit and have a drink and people watch for awhile.

Now look, in my defense, there were only 3 people in the whole place and they were all workers.  It is also much more intimidating then I imagined to walk into a bar in a foreign country just hoping that they either A) speak english or B) have stuff out at which I can point and grunt. So I got flustered and the one phrase I had repeated in my head came out rather stupidly wrong -- but we just got laughed at, not strung up in the middle of town...so that was good.

It turned out to be quite nice!