Blamo! from around the world: Blamo!! from Budapest

Sorry it's taken me a while to get this one up!

9/17

So we drove to Budapest, which meant we got to drive through Slovakia! It was another long day on the bus, but the first night in Budapest was great! We stayed at the Best Western in Budapest, which was really nice and we went to this all you can eat and drink buffee place. The food was awesome and I had a huge plate of salad because we had been having potatoes and meat twice a day the whole trip. I missed my veggies! They also had a whipped cream machine! Since all the other desserts had nuts in them, I had a bowl of whipped cream with chocolate sauce. It was perfection! After dinner, I was super tired and went to sleep.

9/18

So Budapest is actually 2 cities that have merged together, Buda and Pest. They are separated by the Danube River. Pest is larger and newer, while Buda is smaller and has all the old castles and stuff. We were staying in Pest and on Friday we got a tour of Pest! First we stopped at Millenium Square, and of course I don't remember why it's called that.

Paul and Jodie!

Then we walked to a different area where there is a replica of an old castle, Palace, and church. The originals exist elsewhere in Hungary.

Laura and I

The National Art Museum- our guide is an Art History professor and had worked at the museum and was responsible for restoring the Budapest Opera house and other things. He was a cool guy...but maybe a bit of an alcoholic?

We went on a short tour of the art museum, which was really interesting, but it was really hot that day and I definitely had packed for warm weather so I was sweating hard core! Then we got to go wherever we wanted for the afternoon and evening! We saw the largest synagogue in Europe, which is where Paul, Jodie, and I went for services that night because it was Rosh Hashana.

Then we went to this awesome place for lunch that our friends who had gone the week before reccomended. To quote Allison, "We ate like Kings for like 6 Euro!" Then we went to the old Market Hall. It was really touristy, but super awesome. The bottom floor was all food and the top all souveniers. I got a really pretty traditional Hungarian shirt.

Paul, Jodi, and I went to services that night and they were really wierd. They were only 50 minutes long and had almost not reference to Rosh Hashana and we had no idea what was going on. It really made me wish I was at home with my family and at my temple for services. Then met up with some friends at New York Cafe, which was beautiful on the inside, but we weren't allowed to take pictures. Paul and I were kind of bummed about Rosh Hashana, so we went on an epic ice cream adventure with Jodie! We ended up in a mall in what we called the Hungarian version of Walmart at about 11pm. This ice cream bear machine did not actually work, so we bought different ice cream.

9/19

We went on a big tour of Roman Ruins on Saturday. On our way we drove past the Parliament building which is beautiful!!

Now here are some Roman Ruin pictures....we were looking at them for like 6 hours so I have a billion pictures.

Ancient Roman Baths!

Danielle and I

Then we went on a tour of Castle Hill. This tour was optional, meaning that only me and my friends went on it and everyone else went to sleep. By the end of the tour there were only 11 left of the 30 people who had gone to Castle Hill....there were 46 on the trip in total. I can't remember exactly what everything was because it's been a while since I was there and we all know my memory sucks, but here are the pictures. We also got to see the old castle, which is underneath the new castle. The street level used to be like 2 floors lower than it is now, so when you are stading in tower of the old castle you are on the 1st floor of the new one. CRAZY!!

Paul and I

Then that night we had dinner at Octobeerfest, which was Budapest's attempt at Octoberfest...note that it is Octo Beer Fest....oh Budapest.

9/20

Sunday was our last day of the trip and we went to a Communist statue park before driving home. Basically this place is where all the statues that people wanted to get rid of after Hungary was independent again live. It was kind of wierd. For example, this used to be a gigantic statue of Stalin, but people were so pissed that they destroyed all of it except his boots.