Friday, May 15 we took our last final for the semester, and celebrated by going to Budapest. There was a group of seven of us that took about a seven hour bus ride there. We arrived around 11 pm and decided to check out the night life of the city. Budapest seemed to be the town that never sleeps, it was very pretty lit up at night. Budapest is known for their ruin pubs, one of the first ones to arrive there is called "The Szimpla". Ruin pubs are old houses turned into bar/pub/club. It also had a mini theater, an upstairs, and just a really cool atmosphere to the place.
The next day we went to the thermal baths in City Park. These were built in 1909, with water at the temperature of 77 degrees Celsius. Currently there are 3 outdoor baths, and 15 indoor ones. There was also a mini whirlpool inside one of the larger pools. We had fun goofing around in that.
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Picture of the baths, and the whirlpool
(picture is from google)
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Later that night we had a river boat cruise on the Danube. That lasted for about an hour and a half and we were able to see the big monuments, like the Parliament, the Budapest Castle, and other mini ones. It is a beautiful city at night. We even met a couple from Iowa! The next day we set out for more sight seeing. We saw the Matthias Church, which is known for it's colorful tiles. The church was set up on a hill, so we had to climb up quite a bit of stairs, but it was worth it. The view of Budapest was really pretty from there.
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Matthias Church
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Finally from there we walked to the Citadella, which was a fortress on top of Gellert Hill. We saw a lot of great views of Budapest. I learned from our hostel staff member that Budapest is split by the Danube River with one side being called Buda and the other side Pest, which were two Bulgarian military frontier fortresses. The first permanent bridge between the two fortresses was the Chain Bridge, which was built in 1849.
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View from the Citadella
(Buda is on the left side and Pest on the right)
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Budapest was a fun weekend destination, I would love to come back here again and be able to explore more! Now that we are all done with school I only have two more weeks left in Europe.. time has flown by!
