Best in the Pest

Budapest: To begin with, mad props to Jacob for choosing a great hostel for us! We stayed at a party hostel called, Carpe Noctem Vitae which in Latin means "seize the night". Appropriately, we did just that immediately following our arrival. We were welcomed by the hostel-keepers who were an incredibly chill group of people, not much older than us, inviting us to attend an evening on the well-known boat bar, A38. They checked the eight of us in and within fifteen minutes of getting to our rooms and freshening up, we were running out the door. We literally ran the whole way to the bar to catch up to the others going to the river for A38. Here's a couple of pictures from that night!

On the boat with the Budapest buds

Budapest's Parliament

The next morning we were up at a decent time and went on a free walking tour through Budapest. Budapest is split by the river in which one side is Buda and the other is Pest. We were staying on the Pest side, but we got to see plenty of the wealthier Buda side on our tour. Following the tour, we split for the majority of the rest of the day. Some of us shopped and stayed in, and others went out for round two, on a pub crawl to the ruin bars! I was one who hung back, but I got to see them during the day and that was good enough for me. 

View of Pest from the Buda side

View of Buda from the Pest side

A ruin pub is created from keeping the original buildings doomed by destruction and adding old and rejected furniture; they are not only for partying but also for gathering the community.

Our last day in Budapest was my favorite. We slept in and meandered our way to a popular tea house known for its "Narnia like wardrobe entrances" into different tea rooms and its 50 or so different flavors of tea! It was such a relaxing way to start our day! After we each finished our pot of tea we hit up the Grand Market. This was an enormous, overwhelming market of fresh produce, bakeries, spices, and traditional clothes and trinkets --a lot of souvenir shopping happened here. The spa bath was our next stop, and a top priority of the weekend! Before going to Budapest, the thermal baths was about the only thing I knew about the place. The bath we went to is one of the largest in Europe and is the first of the Pest side of Budapest. The bath had hot-spring water with a variety of minerals in it that left our skin feeling good! We strolled through the city park on our way back to the hostel and called it a fairly early night, only because we had to be at our bus at 6AM this morning. Here's some pictures of the tea house and the bath!

One more night in Budapest would have been nice, but I'm grateful for the wonderful time we had there and the beautiful weather we were blessed with. Thanks for reading, love and miss you all!

-Molly