Sunday- Flight to Prague from Geneva was interesting. We have come to learn that with EasyJet, your flight prooobably won’t go out on time. Oh well. We got there. Took a shuttle to our hostel, checked in, found out room. Met one of our roommates, Matt. He’s from Connecticut, studying outside of London, was on vacation. After such a long day, the girls and I decided to go find a local bar. Since Matt was alone, we had him join us. We all found a fun bar that had a club-type place downstairs. There was a group of guys there from the UK for one of their buddy’s bachelor party. Not sure why they were there… seeing as there were no naked girls dancing in cages. But they were fun to talk to. The music was very different from the states and even in Switzerland. More techno-ish. It was entertaining anyway.
Monday- The four of us went out to explore the beauuutiful city of Prague. We started by finding an Easter market which was adorable to walk through. After getting semi-lost, we wound up near the pendulum. We walked all the way up to that, and then down to the castle. The castle was huge and really nice to take pictures of, but at that point we were all hungry. Our quad headed down from the castle and found a café-like restaurant to warm up and have lunch at. Oh, side note. The 3 of us girls call ourselves first (me), second (Caitlyn), and third (Elyse). So since we had Matt with us, we started calling him fourth J After lunch, Elyse and Caitlyn went to do some shopping while Matt and I went back to nap. I had gotten really chilled through out the day, so I cuddled up in my bed until the girls woke me up.
That night we met up with two of our roommates from Paris, Adam and Jason. It’s so funny how you meet random people during your travels, and get to meet up in more exciting cities later! They were with a friend who was from Prague, so he helped us out with the language barrier. After hanging out at one bar, we went to another place for the four of us to have dinner, since the other guys already had. We had an awesome time eating, drinking, and laughing. Adam and Jason had to head back, so we went to meet up with a friend of ours from UNH. Her name is Dana and she’s studying in Rome for the semester. She was in Prague for a bit with one of her best friends from home. Of course, we met up and went for drinks. It was fairly late at that point, so after one drink we said our goodbyes and the four of us went back to our hostel.
Tuesday- The girls and I got up to check out and then continue our travels around the city. Matt wanted to sleep, as he wasn’t leaving that day. Caitlyn and him exchanged numbers and we were off for the day. It was rainy/snowy/cold again, so all indoor activities were quite appealing to us. We went through the market again, climbed a tower at the Charles Bridge, and took a boat ride around the river. From there, we walked around until we found another adorable market and a warm café to sit in while the near-blizzard passed. The three of us sat in there with tea and hot chocolate for almost an hour until the sun came out. When we emerged from the café, we realized that we were right in the middle of the shopping district – perfect! We shopped for a while and realized that we should probably have dinner (I can’t remember if we had lunch or not…) Feeling like we should try some authentic Czech food, we chose a restaurant – bad decision. The food was not what we wanted and the service was terrible. Luckily, two doors down from that was a Friday’s. Don’t judge us, we were hungry. Went there and got food and very large drinks, which we got a lot of looks for. Clearly American, I guess.
Since that night we had a 12:30am overnight train to Budapest, we planned to stay up until then. We called Matt and met him at another bar closer to the hostel (which is where we had left our luggage). A drink or two later, we all headed back to the hostel for the girls to get our bags and head to the train. Said goodbye to our new fourth and attempted to find the train station (we did a pretty good job, thank you very much). Theeeeeen there’s the train to talk about.
Wednesday early morning- Overnight train. Wow. We didn’t know which car to get on, so we got on the first one we saw. Thank GOD that was not the one we had ticket for. Incredibly sketchy, dirty, dark, etc. Next car. A little less sketchy, but didn’t have beds as we had requested. Finally on the third car we tried (we sound like goldilocks) there was someone working who took our tickets and showed us to our cabin. It was a four person cabin, but only set up for the three of us which was a bonus. I don’t think that “basic” even begins to describe it. Tiny little space, mattresses no thicker than a comforter, but it did have a door that locked (we tried it with one of us on either side). I wouldn’t call it clean, but it also wasn’t terribly disgusting. I can’t say that I slept much that night, but it got us to
Budapest safely.
Wednesday- Finally we arrived in Budapest. Our train was supposed to arrive around 8:30, but I think it was almost an hour late. It was clear we were not on a Swiss train. After flipping maps around and reading directions over 10 times, we made it to our hostel via the metro. It was called the Home Made Hostel… and home made it certainly was. Seemed like someone took their flat and converted it into a place where people stay to sleep. They had internet and clean beds, so we couldn’t complain. At that point we couldn’t check in yet, but we left our things and went for a walk around the city. We walked down their fake Champs Elysees to Heroes Square which was beautiful. We continued into the city park and found some sort of castle replica (I believe the real one is in Slovakia). Walking back down the main road we stopped for lunch then headed back to our hostel for some serious napping. We got up to go to dinner, which we had at a nice place around that main road again. A semi-italian dinner which was great. The plan was to go out that night, but all of us were too exhausted to do anything else more than sleep. So after dinner, that’s exactly what we did.
Thursday- We walked the other direction down the main road towards the river. There we got on a tour bus (yay American tourists) that took us on a 2 hour tour around both Buda and Pest. Normally we would never do such a tour, but it let you get on and off at different locations, as well as telling us about much of the history of the cities. We got off at the palace on the Buda side for some incredible views. There was a small market there where we bought this traditional Budapest pastry (though, we also saw it in Prague). They took a long snake-like piece of dough, wrapped it around a metal cylinder on a pole and cooked it over a fire. Then they dusted it with cinnamon and sugar – amaaaazing. After our delicious snack we got back on the tour bus, which then took us to the highest point in Buda for the best view of the cities. And it definitely was.
From there we took the bus back down to the Pest side to walk around some more. We walked over to the Temple (which is the 2nd largest one in the world - the first being the one in NYC), then took the metro up to the mall. It was the first “normal” mall that we’ve seen in a while. Though none of us bought anything, it was nice to feel like we were just back in the states shopping. We had dinner in the area, and then walked back to the hostel. We bought some drinks along the way, thinking that we were going to go out that night. After getting back to the hostel, showering, and chilling out, I really did not feel like going anywhere. Caitlyn and Elyse were on the fence, and once we started chatting with some other guys in our hostel, I assumed they would go out. Ultimately, we all decided to stay in and sleep.
Friday- We hung around the hostel for a bit, then headed to the zoo! It wasn't huge, but it was definately fun. After spending a few hours at the zoo we walked down along the city park. We got to see the beautiful baths there and snuck in to take some pictures. Our flight was late that night, so for the rest of the beautiful afternoon we hung out by parliament and the river. Finally we went back to our hostel to gather our things. Next to the train station we need to be at was a mall. For a quick dinner we went to the food court there and then attempted to get on a train to the airport. Now that was interesting. The train was allll sorts of ghetto. And there was no way to determine when our stop was, because there were no signs. Super. Luckily the guy in the cabin with was very nice and helped us. He didn't speak English, but we showed him our tickets and he told us when to get off.
The rest of the night was normal travel stuff. Flight to Geneva, hotel in Geneva for the night, train back to Bulle Saturday! Whoo! It was quite a week. I know we all had a really great time. Update about my time with my parents soon!
.love and chocolate.
After the tour we went to the store they had and of course bought some fun things. The day before we had noticed a diner and so we headed over there for lunch. It was nice to just have good, greasy food. Delicious. The rest of the day we spent walking around the city (including Trinity College) and shopping. Typical us. We had been considering going on a pub crawl, but didn't want to go alone. When we got back to the hostel we met a girl named Casey who was from the US and was going on a pub crawl that night with her boyfriend. We convinced Rosh to go with us, which was not hard to do. Silly-ly, we didn't eat dinner. The three of us grabbed something small from a convenience store along the way, and then met the group at 8. There were a bunch of Americans on the tour, and some people from Finland and Germany. We went to 4 different pubs around the city. It was so much fun! It was really nice going out and meeting people in the city.
