I want to post pictures.

After Rachel and I grabbed some grub, we popped in to see the lobby of the gorgeous opera hall. All of the cities visited in this little vacation have some seriously fabulous operas: Vienna, Budapest, and Prague. I only saw the opera in Vienna.. but it was beautiful and definitely left me hungering for more. I won't let the first opera I saw taint my opinion.

The main point of this Budapest trip was the walking. We did all of the walking tours that were offered of the city. One each day. The walking was so good. I know that coming back to the states I am going to miss the luxury of being able to walk anywhere and everywhere. I think I am going to have to live in the city city. I just love it so much. It is so convenient.. but I digress. We ran to meet up with the group for the Communist walk. We were enlightened on what life was like in the city during the communist era, how there wasn't anyone who could be trusted, even your family and friends could be informants. We were led around the city to see the different communist buildings, the statues, bullet holes in the buildings and were told story after story about life at this time. It was extremely interesting and not surprisingly had me feeling quite thankful for the way that I grew up.

Not quite tired of walking yet, Rachel and I ventured out to get some more sightseeing in. We headed over to the Synagogue, which is supposed to be quite a big deal in the Jewish culture but unfortunately it was closed for passover. We attempted to ask the guards if it were possible since Rachel is Jewish to go inside for a service, but no. This kind woman on the street heard us speaking in English and offered to be our translator.. She too couldn't get them to let us in. Turns out she is from Canada with Hungarian family and was there buying a flat.. cool? right. New life goal, own house/flat in another country to visit whenever. So point of the story, we were in Budapest at the wrong time to see the inside of the synagogue.. I was kind of bummed too, I have never been in a synagogue. c'est la vie?

We headed back towards the hostel to figure out what we were going to do for dinner. We had been recommended a place to eat by a girl on one of the tours we went on and so we decided to head there. Turns out it was right behind our hostel, easy. we ate our meal and decided we wanted to see the city at night from the castle and take some pictures. We started heading over that way. On our walk, a million and one police cars started racing down the street, then came black cars, limos, more police. WHAT. IS. THIS?! Rachel informed me it was a police escort thing.. she told me what it was called, but i will have to get back to you on that. It was a pretty far walk, so by the time we got to the bridge it was about midnight. The city, I am sure looked gorgeous from that spot, as the bridge alone was a sight. We cross the bridge. Rachel was like should we take a cab up there? I was like no, we are fine, c'mon they say this city is safe. We start climbing the stairs into the foresty park and I got spooked (les, you know how i am) I turned to look at Rachel and asked her, Do you think this is safe? I don't know any more, it is dark. We make eye contact and start running back down the stairs. WE CHICKENED OUT!! We walked all the way there, a half an hour walk and were 5 minutes from there and we turned around to run back. We suck. How am I going to ever have any adventure if I freak out when there is the slightest bit of discomfort?

So we traded walking up the hill for an impromptu chat about life and a mini photo shoot of the bridge.. it was really pretty all lit up. We got back to the hostel a bit after midnight and I was out like a lightbulb.

The next day we were heading to the Turkish baths. Oh. My. Gosh. I didn't want to leave. I could have spent the entire day there skipping around from pool to pool to steamroom to pool. I want to go back. It was a gorgeous building and again we were standing right in front of it when asking a passerby where it was located. We went in and included in our price was a changing cabin/locker. It was a maze I tell you of locker cabins. We got into our bathing suits and probably spent 30 minutes looking for the entrance to the pools. We finally found it and our first stop was a hot tub of about 38 degrees celcius (about 100 in Farenheight) Right off the bat, I noticed how disgusting the water was and how many people had soaked their nasty bodies in there before me, but I pushed it out of my mine and relaxed. It was in.cred.i.ble. I kid you not. Two pool later was a cooler one with a current that propelled you around the pool in a counter clockwise direction. so cool.

there also are heated pools outside where the men gather to play some poolside chess. I got yelled at for trying to swim laps without a swim cap. My bad. If you go, dont forget your swim cap. We ended the morning with a nice sit in the eucalyptus scented steam room. Not one millisecond in there and I was sweating my tookus off. So Hot, like me. It was so good for my congestion though. I want a eucalyptus steam room with me wherever I go.

We booked it to grab something to eat at the market. We wanted to see what the market had to offer and try some Langos. We saw one that looked amazing. It is a sweet dough with shredded cheese and the one we wanted had a million veggies on it. Little did we know each veggie was charged seperately and this little pizza like thing that we were going to share was the most expensive meal we had all week. CRAZY. After we ate, we were running late to make it to the Jewish walking tour and literally ran to make it there on time, all while eating our nutella dripping sweet dough. so good. We made it just on time and we set off to see the jewish district and hear of all that it had to offer. We walked past the synagogue again, learned about the jewish history in Budapest and heard a little about the Nazi Occupation. We also were able to check out some of the bars in the area. I think I mentioned it before, but many of the bars are old abandoned buildings that once were apartments. They have a cool, ecclectic vibe to them with the decor consisting of recycled materials (AKA crap). The tour ended and we headed off to do some more walking and to take pictures of Heroe's Square, the park, and the baths. We ran into a friend on our walk back to the hostel/to buy some wine for the hostel dinner. He had just come from wine buying and so we went to that place to pick up a bottle. We made it back to the hostel to see everyone hanging out in the common area and our bottles of wine were cracked open. We followed the wine with a shot of home made Hungarian liquor of some sort. My throat was on fire. I think I literally drank rubbing alcohol. It was terrible... but oh so good. Dinner consisted of a Hungarian goulash cooked by our awesome hostel owner. He was the coolest man ever and if he weren't so short, I would have had the biggest crush on him. He was always making sure we were ok and giving us advice, chatting with us. We got a group of people together to head to the bars after dinner. Some other American students studying in Prague were in town for the weekened and a pair of Mexican friends. We all went out for a great night and made it back to bed around 3am. My alarm was set for 6 the next morning in order to make my bus....