Maggie and I made it safely to Budapest, and on time too. My trip started in Philadelphia, where security sadly confiscated my peanut butter (which I would hardly consider a liquid). Despite that, though, the flight was pleasant enough and I took a nice 2 hour nap on a chair in Heathrow while waiting for Maggie to land. We landed in Budapest at about 2:30 PM, took a shuttle to our hostel, which is a small quaint place on the second floor of an old building in a pretty central location.
Once settling in, we headed out to walk around a bit, crossing the Danube into Buda (our hostel is in Pest), where we conveniently stumbled upon the baths the Maggie's uncle said we have to go to. Since it is about 90 degrees and sunny every day, we plan to spend a good chunk of Friday there. We went to the markets at the old train station, and then got dinner at a nice cafe right by our hostel. I immediately remembered why I love Europe - being able to spend 2 hours just sitting and talking and not having the waiter pushing you to leave.
We went to bed early, which was great considering I had slept maybe four hours in the last 48 hours. This morning we woke up and went for a short run through the city to see the National Parliament and St. Stephens Basilica. I carried my camera and we took pictures of each other running across the playa in front of the Parliament building. We hope to run in each city and take a few pictures in the most scenic places. After the run we headed back out to Heroes' Square, a good walk from our hostel. On the way we went to the House of Terror, a museum chronicling the Nazi and Soviet occupation of Budapest, and that building in particular. It was interesting, though not very well organized, and seeing the actual prison cells and execution areas in the basement was pretty striking. In the museum we also rode on the world´s slowest elevator - it literally took five minutes to go down two stories. We realized, though, that there was supposed to be a movie playing on the screen behind us, but for some reason it wasn´t working, so we just spent the five minutes staring at each other.
After the museum we walked around the Heroes´ Sqaure and the park there. The other main baths in the city are in that park, and the building is very pretty from the outside. To get back to the hostel we walked back along main boulevard and past the Central Synagogue. Unfortunately we couldn´t go in since we were wearing tank tops, and all visitors had to have their shoulders covered. Tomorrow we plan to walk up Castle Hill and then spend the afternoon lounging at the baths!
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