Budapest / Vienna : God Rests in Reason.

We made it to Budapest….after our extremely long train ride! We eached watched a movie on our iPods (I watched Austin Powers – so funny) then decided to go ahead and go to bed since it was about midnight at that point. We actually got called out for being too loud by the train flight attendant (?) because the wall between our cabin and the one next to us was tiny apparently and we were being too loud watching movies…with our headphones in. Please. Anyway, I got the top bunk because I was the smallest. Of course. And I slept on the "sheets" the whole time – kinda nasty. Then we were rudely wakened by not 1, not 2, not 3, but FOUR polizia coming around to check our passports everytime. You'd think we were in WW2 or something the way they knocked and checked our passports. Seriously. We were porbably the 3 least threatening people on the train and yet we practically had a line-up everytime we entered a new country on the train. So my TylenolPM-aided sleep was not so pleasant.

We finally made it at 11am in Budapest and cabbed from the train station to our hostel that Ben had found. The cab had to ask a few people for directions (bad sign #1) then when we finally got there, the sign on the door that was for the hostel was on duck tape (bad sign #2). After a call to the company, they tell us to wait for 10 minutes until they got there. The building we were in was SKETCH. Thankfully, when they finally got there, we went to a different building a couple of blocks away. Turns out that the 5 person room we booked was actually an apartment that they rented out which could've been cool…but it wasn't. It was hot, dirty, sketchy, and car alarms were going off all night (bad sign #3). We put our stuff down and went to the authentic Hungarian restaurant of … Subway! So good. Haven't had it all trip and it was fantastic. Then we did a little walking around down to the Danube river, over to the Buda side (Sidenote: it's actually pronounced Boo-duh-paysht) and saw the Buda palace. We got to watch a human chess match which was hilarious and acutally really entertaining. Then we walked the Chain Bridge where they were having the Summer on the Bridge festival which was basically like a fair on a bridge – tons of little kiosks of knick-knacks and lots of food. We got some Hungarian BBQ like meal for dinner then went to this super cool café/bar and watched the Euro2008 finals. After the game we went back to the "apartment" and attempted to sleep. Clay and Kylie couldn’t sleep through the night while the rest of us TPM'ed it through the blazing hot night.

So in the morning, we peaced out and went to the Best Western Budapest. AMAZING. That day we got ready and went to Heroes Square and ate at this great little place on this lake and had some legit Hungarian food that was PERF. We had heard about these Turkish baths that were all over Budapest so we went to this one nearby that was suggested by the guy at the hotel – probably the wrong guy to ask – and got into our swimsuits. These baths are basically just huge country club / YMCA-type places with pools and hot tubs and saunas and stuff. It was pretty cool even though we were probably the youngest people there. Tons of old and wrinkly foreign people. So we ended up leaving after an hour and getting cleaned up for the night. We went on this beautiful night boat tour down the Danube and saw the towns and all the monuments lit up at night – it was one of my favorite things we've done on the trip so far. So much fun. Then we went to dinner at this place right under the Chain bridge and just had a good time out that night. Getting a cab back to the "West Bestern" hotel was an experience. As always. Good times.

This morning we got up and ate our delicious breakfast (EGGS! FINALLY!) at the hotel then headed to the train station for Vienna. We got here at around 4 and came to our hostel which is MUCH better than our last attempt at a hostel. It's a school dorm that they turn into a hostel during the summer. Everyone speaks English and they're super nice and they have a bar/lounge downstairs so there's an attempt at making it enjoyable. We walked around the center of the shopping center area while we waited for our room to be ready. Then we went to eat at this local Vienna place and then came back and just chilled here because we were pretty exhausted. Tomorrow we plan to travel all over Vienna in a day then head to Prague tomorrow night!

KEEP UP SON!

Regs