Budapest

Thursday, April 8 – Woke up at the crack of dawn to catch our flight to Budapest (pronounced Budapechst). We met our tour guide and hopped on yet another bus for a tour of the city before our flight to Cyprus. The first district we went through was super sketchy, dirty, and run down; I didn’t like it. But our tour guide was great, she pointed out more of the communist apartments that are still there and explained the layout of them – she said they are extremely small; you can’t fit a double bed into the bedrooms.

We first were on the Pest side of the river, drove by a zoo and a castle and to the Heroes’ Square (below) – a monument built after the conquest when Hungary became independent (I think). We drove toward the center, this part was much nicer. The Parliament building was awesome!! It looked like a cross between a cathedral and a castle and a palace – it was beautiful!

We crossed the Chain Bridge to the Buda side and went up to the church at the top of the hill. We saw a building that had a ton of divots/marks on the side; it was from bullet’s hitting the building during WWII, whoa! We walked up to the Matthias Church (right) which had a really cool, multi-colored designed tiled roof. The Fisherman’s Bastion (below) was in front of the church and overlooked the river to the Pest side – it was gorgeous!

Parliament Building on the Pest side

We went back to the Pest side to go to Vaci Street towards the Central Market Hall – a huge hall with lots of fruits, veggies, books, tourist stuff, everything. We shopped around (everything was so cheap!!) and went to dinner – goulash soup and a salad that could have fed a family of 5 for a good 3 days!! We walked down by the river/bridge (almost got hit by a train) and took some pictures of the sun going down, it was BEAUTIFUL!!! Some of my friends went wandering around and found a church with a bunch of lights and paparazzi around, then they saw Uma Thurman! Turns out Uma Thurman and Robert Pattinson were filming a new movie in the church in Budapest – crazy! Back on the bus -> airport -> and finally back in Cyprus at 5 AM!

I loved Budapest; I wished we could have stayed there longer. The city center is beautiful! It was a perfect end to the trip!


This 16 day trip was unreal! I saw so much of Europe in such a short amount of time, it would have been nice to have a little more time in each city/time to decompress and take everything in, but it was awesome!! I learned more in this 2 ½ week trip than I could have in any textbook, everything from history to politics to culture. There are so many things that I love about Europe (don’t worry mom, I will come back…eventually). But I was definitely ready to be back in Cyprus! Time to rest, diet, and get a few things done before our next adventure! :)