Budapest!

The blog catch up effort continues!

 Wizz Air is another one of the many discount airlines that fly all over Europe.  They are a Hungarian airline that services mostly eastern European cities.  We happened to check the website when they were offering a killer deal, and booked tickets to both Budapest, Hungary and Krakow, Poland at the same time for around 15 euro per person per way.  You heard that right……that equates to around $45 round trip per person!  If it’s Krakow that you want to hear about, too bad, because we didn’t go there until January.... haha.   That blog post is about 3 or 4 down the road, but here is a little bit about our trip to Budapest!

We didn’t really know that much about Budapest or the Hungarian culture before our trip.  We had heard from several of our friends/travel advisors that Budapest was one of their favorite cities to travel to.  I can say now that we know what they meant.  It was a great city and very easy to get around. 

We arrived in the late afternoon, so we didn’t really have much time to go to any museums or anything the first night.  We got settled in to our apartment and headed out to get some dinner.  After dinner we had an appointment at a place called Claustophilia.  It is a group mystery game.  The basically lock you in an apartment, and you have to solve logic puzzles and answer other questions using only things that are in the rooms.  It was a great time and a perfect way to start out time in Budapest. 

We spent our first full day in Budapest just wandering the city.  We walked around the old city center and along the Danube River, which separates the two portions of the city (Buda and Pest), which used to be two separate cities.  We also visited Buda Castle and the 2^nd largest Synagogue in the world (the Dohany Street Synagogue).  Here are some pictures of our wanderings.

That evening was the highlight of the trip!  We took a dinner cruise on the Danube.  We were kind of skeptical going into it, but it turned out to be really fun.  The food was great, along with the atmosphere and the music.  Here are some pictures that we took during the cruise.

Our final day in Budapest was a little bit more relaxed.  We took a tour of the Hungarian State Opera House and went to the Central Market as well to get some traditional Hungarian food (goulash and lots of food with Paprika in it).  You will see that they had some interesting things for sale here as well.  We ended our time in Budapest with a relaxing dinner and a wine tasting. 

                                       

                                       

As I said before, we definitely know why everyone talked so highly of Budapest.  We would recommend that anyone go there for a few days.  The city was beautiful, the people were very welcoming, and they had some pretty cool looking money!