Allie in Eastern Europe: Part 2, Budapest

Lately I have been making an effort to go back through my older blog posts to update them and add photos, since this was not something I did from the very beginning. It has been fun to re-read these memories and then to find the right pictures to go with them. During this process I have come to realize that I have left out some places that I traveled in the past and though these experiences aren't exactly fresh in my memory, I would at least like to record them now (with photos) so that in the future I at least have something written down.

 My first new/old addition is the second half of our visit to Eastern Europe, a trip during which we visited first Vienna and then Budapest. We made this trip in the spring of 2011 (over 2 years ago). Thankfully having a Facebook album dedicated to our vacation helps me to preserve a lot of memories. I already wrote about the Vienna part of our tour here. We visited there first and then spent some time in Budapest. 

 I really enjoyed our time in Budapest. First because it is such an interesting place. Budapest is really two different cities that are on both sides of the Danube (Buda and Pest). It has a ton of history and we had gorgeous weather during our visit. Second Budapest is much more affordable than Vienna where we ended up eating  a lot of street food to stay within our budget. In Budapest we had two pretty memorable food events, one was a river boat cruise dinner complete with typical music. It was awesome! We got to see both sides of the city from a really unique vantage point and watch as it went from dusk to nighttime. Plus the food buffet was pretty good! The food in general in Budapest was heavy, think goulash. 
The musicians
Amazing view from the boat
We also went to a huge indoor market where we ate as well. The food seemed to be pretty authentic and we got a good deal to be sure.
Yum!
During this trip we also took a walking tour that described life in the communist era and how Hungary has been changing and developing afterwards. It was super interesting and I learned a lot of new things. The tour guides were young people who had come to know capitalism after communism. They showed us important places around the city and pointed out changes in architecture, history and the Hungarian outlook on things like travel, pop culture and the economy.
This for example was a building that after the fall of communism was only restored at street level.
We spent time on both sides of the Danube river, in Buda and also in Pest. We visited the important places and then right before it was time to leave, we went to one of their famous thermal spas. We basically paid for a couple of hours of lounging in warm water. It was really a nice way to end our trip.

Check back for more updates, new photos and new posts on places that we have visited but that were not mentioned here on the blog. Oh the joys of a rainy summer week here in Michigan, lots of free time to catch up on things!

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