How bout them bridges in Budapest

We arrived in Budapest sleepy and ready to find our hostel. After figuring out the metro system and finding the hostel right door (we had to get one of the staff to come down the stairs and find us) we then met the people in our room and our sleep needed to be delayed to go out to bed beachh? the happeninnn place that night..

It was pretty much the Jersey shore of Budapest and thats all im going to say about that.
We woke up tired and went on a FREE walking tour where we ran into the English people from Krakow- Adam, Emily and Alex.

The tour and the huge history lesson began when we learnt the loser past of Hungary. We then spent most of the next half hour hearing the tour guide list all the ways to say Art Nouveau in every European language. She was just very overexcited.

We walked From Pest to Buda, which is smaller but prettier, and finished there.

We decided to go to the Central Market with the English people and after a the long walk back to Pest, it was closed.

Instead we went to a supermarket and bought ingredients for a lazy but tasty dinner of Mexican themed pasta.

The next day we started a little earlier and went straight to the Central Market.

Most of the shops sold creepy animal parts, different cheese pastry things and lots of Paprika!!!

So I am not quite sure how to build up to such an epic moment in the blog. WE WENT ON SO MANY BRIDGES IN BUDAPEST!
First there was the green bridge

then Elizabeth Bridge (White Bridge)

Chain Bridge

And then we found the holy mother mary of all bridges

We met up with the Brits and their friend Rick from Holland at the Szechenyi baths after failing to find the door. Again.
We spent the next few hours going from pool to pool

and
Then from the Saunas to ice pools

This bath was the only one that stayed open till 10 so we stayed in the outside warm pool and watched the star (which was possibly a satelite)

After we left the baths we headed to a bar and on the way got our last budapest bridge photo

It was then time to say goodbye to our English friends and head back home.

On our last day in Budapest we decided to explore Buda. We were told that the Citadel was amazing so we headed in the vague direction hoping to find the way up. Half an hour and a creepy museum security guy later we found started climbing the stairs. It was worth it in the end though, except when Lee dropped and broke her camera screen, forcing her to take blind photos of people, objects and things.

But after getting lost a bit we found a park with a better view where we had lunch.

We started walking back to the hostel with an important pit stop at the largest synagogue in Europe. So we posed.

A Few of our Favourite Things

We arrived in Vienna at the beautiful hour of 5am with the sound of music soundtrack stuck in our heads. We befriended a guy on the bus who we later realised we didnt actually know his name. We began exploring the main streets which was completly dead EVEN MACDONALDS WAS CLOSED!

so we killed an hour on a bus bench until Macdonalds opened at 7.

Nameless guy then left us and we made our way to the Naschmarkt flea Markets which where really cool

And there were so many differnt types of Hummus!

We then decided to secure our bridge photo and walk to the river. On our way we discoved the bike system of Austria. After bribing Nell with a vegan restraunt in exchange for flashing the whole of Vienna we set off on our bikes.

Bridge photo. Tick

We then ate our olive Hummus and walnut bread that we bought at the market beside the river

After saying goodbye to our bikes we went through the old town which was so beautiful.we saw St. Stephen's Cathedral

And An Australian Bar

Before heading back to the bus station we stumbled across a vegetarian restraunt and got a burger and fries. And then we went on our way to Budapest

Polish Pretzels and Places

After one of the seemingly longest bus rides ever, we arrived in Warsaw. We arrived at our really awesome hostel which was all eco friendly and they even had a vegan breakfast option which nell was very excited about. Even more of a win they gave us a 4 bedroom room instead of 12 and we were the only ones in it so we took full advantage of that and soon the room looked alot like the ones we left at home.

We started our Jewish polish site seeing with a search for a part of the ghetto wall. We failed. It was complicated. We then moved on to the Jewish Synagogue which had a kosher restaurant which was really exciting and they had felafel for only $3!

We then continued to the Warsaw Uprising Museum, which actually had very little to do with jewishness so the theme of the day was pretty much ruined. It was still pretty interesting though

Our second attempt at finding the Ghetto wall then began. And failed. We landed up in the supermarket. Our third attempt however was successful with the help of an old Polish women who saw us looking very confused. I think how confused we were was fully justified because it was in a courtyard of an apartment building and at one point I was quite sure we were trespassing.

After a long and tiring day of being Jewish we went to a vegetarian restaurant and had what was described as “a burger” but it was really just a soy fillet. Which was a bit sad. (says Lee)

The second day of sightseeing began with an artistic and metaphorical tree sculpture called “letters from Jerusalem” which was just a palm tree in the middle of a round abouty thing. We didn’t really get the artistic statement but we posed in front of it anyway

We went through the old town which was so pretty as well as the 13th century royal castle.

(and yes we are wearing matching clothing. we can't help it)

But the day would not be complete without eating everything Polish including pierogi, crazily tall ice-cream, malt beer and of course gelato.

We also went to the Jewish cemetery which is the biggest one in Europe and we bought a candle.

We moved on to see Praga which is an area of Warsaw that is more original as it was less bombed. It was used as the setting for The Pianist.

As we crossed the bridge to Praga we had a bear incounter... there was an advertisement for the zoo in the form of a bear enclosure right on the road, about 10m from the main road.

Not the best conditions ever. It was a bit of a rundown area (as my mum would say ‘not very lebedic’) so we tried to leave before dark.
But before we did we made friends with a kebab shop owner from Bethlehem who made really good falafel.

We went back to our hostel by bus and met Charlie, a Canadian guy, who we went out with for a beer. While we were out at some random bar in Warsaw, we were out we ran into Amanda and Steve, who we met in Vilnius and then ran into again in Kaunas. They joined us and we chilled for a while until the bar was closing. Sadly we couldn’t actually leave the bar because Amanda got stuck in the bathroom but don’t worry the owner gave us free beer and Amanda didn’t even go thirsty and drank some through the key hole.

After about 20 minutes of us trying to break the door down using knives and forks the owner called a locksmith and power tools became involved after about an hour and a half, a destroyed door and Nell completely fallen asleep on one of the tables, she got out.

The next day we got up early to buy tickets to Krakow. After missing the first train, we got on the 2nd and met a Polish/German who seemed to hate most things about Germany (except the kebabs) but was really friendly. We found our hostel really easily even with the constant distractions of cheap pretzels. We put our stuff down and went to check out the supermarket (shocking, I know) and eat pretzels.
(sadly we were too hungry and excited by the pretzels to take a photo)
We went back to our room and met a girl from Alaska (Kerry we think?) and went to book a tour to Auschwitz. It was quite late by then so we went for a bit of a walk around the old town and went back to the hostel.

The next morning we woke up really early to start our tour at 8am. The bus to Auschwitz was about an hour and a half and we watched a movie about the camps for most of it. When we got to Auschwitz we were started our tour by walking around Auschwitz I which is used as a museum. It’s really hard to describe what it was like being there.

In some ways it was exactly as I imagined after years of seeing pictures and hearing stories and going to museums. But the size of it is probably the most confronting part.
At Birkenau all you could see were hundred of brick chimneys were the Nazis had burned down the wooded sheds. It was also weird because it was quite crowded, especially in the museum.

We got back from Auschwitz at about 2.30pm and decided to go on the Jewish walking tour. We quickly found out we were the only Jewish people on the tour which I found surprising. The tour guide was really good and we went around Kazimierz which was the old Jewish area and walked to the old Jewish ghetto

which was a bit better preserved and presented than the one in Warsaw. We finished our tour at Oskar Schindler’s factory, where we didn’t get a chance to go inside but we did learn that he wasn’t actually as great as the movie made him out to be, which was a bit depressing.
That night we chilled at the Hostel with Kerry and Some English people we met, Adam, Alex and Emily. We weren’t in the mood for a crazy night after our pretty intense day and went to bed quite early.
Our last day in Poland started with us attempting to secure transport to Budapest, but failing as it was incredibly expensive. After spending some time studying maps of Europe we decided to go via Vienna and spend the day there.
We then went back to the Jewish quarter to explore a bit more and buy some really good value baguette thing.

We had a really chilled day, wondering around, eating and finally buying a new phone...which was for some reason in Hungarian so the hostel couldn’t help me change the language.

We went back through the old town and watched some gangstaaa street performers who had to be the weirdest break dancers ever. Most of their routine was barking.

Just before we left we got a pretty bridge photo

Then we went to the bus station and headed off to Vienna.