Hello - See you
Goodbye - See yah ztok
Thanks - Kohh-sey-nom
Please - Care-Em
Our 1st overnight train was definitely interesting! We couldn't get a bed because they were all taken so we ended up in a cabin with one other dude -
The train split 2 times and left certain carts in certain places while we slept overnight and made our way to Budapest at 8am!
We walked from the train station feeling mostly rested and looking for big Buddas everywhere. Budapest as it turned out to us just ended up seeming like a regular city, if a bit rundown. We made it to our hostel - The Maverick Hostel
Another Hostel in the chain that is labeled "Europe's Best Hostels" from http://www.famoushostels.com/
Thanks again Matt! This place was pretty cool. The whole thing was in a remodeled palace and the hostel was just on one of the levels.
The "theme" of the hostel was Big Lebowski with the names of the rooms and the pictures on the walls. Phrases like "Nobody F*%#s With The Jesus", adorned the walls while our rooms name was "The Stranger". Once in the room we noticed it was clean, stylish, good space and we quickly warmed up to the accommodations, though no Big Lebowski items resided in our room :)
Now we couldn't actually get into the room yet because it was occupied, so that was later, but we took passports, labtops, and eurail pass stuff out of our bags and took our paperwork with us in the daypack, leaving computers n such with the front desk and our bags in the baggage area. We planned out an
EPIC DAY -
Soon we were off, with all our research and what to do on one map that was already the best map we had found of any city, done by City Spy. As our time in Budapest went on we continuously discovered more things of value in it. It had a handy translator from English to Hungarian on one section of it, restaurants, clubs, and points of interest with descriptions in another section. You could see the metro stops and lines over it, and much more. If you ever went to Budapest you'd be lucky to take this holy grail with you. Here is a useful, and funny, section that could be used to strike up conversation with any local and be good for a laugh, plus some helpful phrases too and here is a pic of the translations -
Off we went to the biggest Thermal Baths in the city, Szechenyi, found in the gardens in the northeast part of town. After paying 4,000 Hungarian each, we were transported into a city of baths, saunas, steam rooms, pools, and whirlpools.
The 1st pool we stepped into is the 1st one you see above and was nice, about 100 degrees, and easy to wade around in and to be "healed". The healing powers of the water in the thermal baths in Budapest is legendary. This special water in these baths, created by the limestone and other elements under the city mixing with the waters, are all over the city. Some of them allow men only, some of them were built with awesome architecture in and around the underground baths, and others are just huge like this 1st one we went to where dudes even come to play chess in the waters
We headed to another couple pools and then found a whirlpool area. It was fun to whirl around a bit then head into the more intimate part of the baths, the smaller rooms, saunas and steamrooms. From one to the next we tested and tried. Each "tub" or room was labeled with a degree.
Of course all in celsius so they meant little at 1st glance and we had to get used to what they were (unless I bothered to do the conversion in my head a couple times). Some of the saunas were so ridiculously hot that Candace slightly burnt her bum on one and I felt like my throat was almost burning!
Thats Celcius! We made sure to try everything though and after a couple eucalyptus steam rooms, we made our way to an area that became Candace's favorite. We learned the Hungarian way to sauna. 1st enter a nice hot sauna and get very hot. 2nd quickly head to the coldtub right outside. That tub is anywhere from around 20 to 16 degrees celsius and you plunge right into it -
It is definitely different from what you would think it is. It feels great actually and Candace and I went and did it a couple more times =) It reminded me of when we Ice Climbed with Carl Drew in Canada and went from Sauna to rolling around in the snow outside of it.
By this time it had been a couple of hours and our pruned hands and fingers yelled at us to move on so we trudged over to Hero's Square which was only a couple minute walk from the baths.
Random Cool sky pic -
We saw one of the statues in the square that had a Parrot/Bird on top of a staff/flag and Candace immediately commented on Bonnaroo Music Fest where Brian, Sawyer, our neighbor crew we met there along with Candace and I had a flag with a parrot on top that we would lug around the festival that we used to help to find each other after various concerts (there are 13 stages with music playing all over the place at that super sick festival in Tennessee).
I liked the statues because each warrior or "hero" had a unique weapon, whether mace, club, lance, scythe or whatever. Several of them I had never seen before.
I began to dream and visualized them going to battle with the statue from Florence that I talked about earlier in a blog post. The guy who could tear apart a lion. The battle unfolded in my mind as I gazed on at the various warriors. By the time Candace mentioned the flag comment above, I snapped out of it and had figured that the "god"-like dude from Florence could probably take maybe 3 of the warriors at once with his bare hands. Anyways, we continued with our plan and took the walk from Hero's Square down Andrassy avenue, praised as the "Paris" of Budapest. Being Sunday I believe that was why everything was closed, which I thought odd for shops at a largely traveled up and coming tourist city, but it was not very impressive architecture either way
(except for this cool painted wall =)
And was just an OK walk as we made our way to the Opera House
where I offered to provide a tour of it for some tourists even though I didn't know anything about the Opera House. It would have been fun to make everything up though, but that didn't end up happening and as we changed subjects looking for some classical tickets for later we found that they were "on holiday" and that there were no performances to be purchased for that night or the next so we sadly departed and continued towards the coolest part of Budapest to walk around - the River & Bridges.
We totally had a couple detours before we could make it though. 1st Candace saw some tents in the distance down a road so off we went to investigate. It turned out to be a Hungarian wedding going on in the middle of some square. This was way cool.
With the monk in the above picture sitting cross-legged and chanting away, the fire burned in front of him as we walked around this public wedding and watched the bride and groom go thgough the unique process. As the couple took steps together, we listened to the one speaking for them in the foreign language and walked over towards the unique float structure they had going on, passing a bunch of food for sale for the bride and groom's benefit.
Immediately we saw the bar playing tennis with Federer and Murray going at it on the big screens and with the bar's cool outside patio, we couldn't resist. We knew it was a "tourist" trap location (basically everything is 2x what the cost of food/drink than it is 2 blocks away from the "tourist zone"), but they had the atmosphere and the match playing so they had our $ too. The food was cool too - a feta type cheese over potatoes and such -
The match got rained out and we headed out. Making it to the river, we were immediately sold a boat tour (we already knew we wanted one, but we had our fun with the lady and she was all smiles by the end), and told to go see Bruce Willis on the bridge over that way. Apparently that day they had been using the bridge as a film set. This must have been one of her main selling points as she repeatedly utilized it even though we figured filming was probably done for the day, but who knew!? We headed down toward the bridge and boat, found our boat on pier 11 and hopped on (no filming). It was a nice rivercruise and we passed one of the biggest parliament buildings in Europe
In fact, the buildings design was actually created through a contest that was put on. The people in charge of building the building put the call out for contest calling for the best design to create their parliament building. As it turns out they picked the #1 design for the parliament, then the runner up and #3 for 2 other government buildings adjacent to the parliament.
We also passed by some castles on hills
and some cool stuff I don't remember the name of much because of how awesomely terrible the english was on the tour, haha.
Once the tour was complete we took a stroll along the river and wandered into a former royal palace, now a Four Seasons Hotel. The floors were cool, and we noticed some other things we liked too, categorizing them into the ever-growing mental notes on designing our own Super cool house.
We headed across the bridge, taking in the great scene around us and cool designs on the bridge.
Walking up a huge hill we got our beautiful view of the city,
walked by a cool building,
And continued on to the dinner that we were super excited about. I pulled out my device pants from the bike trip that I had packed that morning into the daypack and threw those on instantly becoming formal enough to enter Cafe Pierrot.
"21" is across the street under the brown awnings
Entering to live piano music, our waiter treated us like royalty as we gave him our names for the reservation, sat down to an amazing atmosphere, ordered a couple things, and were soon brought a shot of specialty cauliflower soup compliments of the chef.
Soon our main dish came out and we enjoyed the Pike-Fish and our complimenting wine.
One thing thats great about all of this is that the exchange for value of things in American dollars to Hungarian cash is pretty darn good. A $30 dish costs around $13 and so on...
We proceeded to have a great meal at Cafe Pierrot but it wasn't yet over. We told our waiter that we would be back for dessert. He indicated that if we would like we could sit up in the garden, and that he would also keep our reservation on our current table as well for us, just in case. Off we headed across the street to "21", a restaurant we heard about that conveniently was right across from Cafe Pierrot. We were so full that all we could order was wine and soup!
We were excited to be back in Cafe Pierrot for dessert and headed right for the garden
The walls around the garden are high enough that even Sputnick couldn't get up ;) But seriously, the castle-style, vine-covered walls stretched up on and on and the lighting in the garden set the atmosphere up to a tee.
The dessert hit the spot, as Candace had Creme Brule and I had something I'd never had before (sorry can't remember everything!). After enjoying our dessert and atmosphere a bit longer, we had a taxi called for us and were back NEAR The Maverick in no time. The driver dropped us off at the wrong metro stop so we had a nice 5-10 minute walk back to our place, passing through a plaza area where people were still chilling out and having a relaxing evening.
Day 2 Budapest-
We woke up to a lazy morning and got prepared for the day. Today was Caving day! We had heard about this caving thing in Budapest from a couple different people along our trip thus far and all the comments were positive "you gotta do it" type of remarks. I spent about 20 minutes online reading many different reviews and all being positive as well, we booked it for 4pm and headed out for our second thermal bath experience at the Gellert Baths in the meantime.
Though this one was significantly smaller than the previous days bath, it was unique in its historical sense. With beautiful carvings and setup on the inside,
it was cool to swim in it while enjoying the surrounding view.
Cool ceilings inside too -
This was their wave pool, which the other baths didn't have, and the waves produced were nothing to note, but it was cool they had one though!
Panoramic -
At the decent sized baths, like this one, they often have food that you can purchase. One thing of note that we purchased was a "greek salad". A bit different way of preparing it and Candace and I really liked it.
In fact, we had had it a couple times like this in Europe and at this point Candace made note of the recipe which I inserted below -
Greek Salad
Caitlin would have loved it… no lettuce just god veggies, called a greek salad at the restaurant we were at…
Greek salad recipe
Equal Parts (as the main portion of your dish):
1 cucumber (chopped)
1 large/2 small Tomatos (chopped in aprox. 1/2" x 1/2" slices
1 large Yellow Pepper (chopped)
With a few:
Red Onions (shave 3-4 slices off and chop, enough to garnish)
1/4c Green olives (pitted sliced in 1/2 or 1/3)
1/4c fetta (Small cubes)
Drizzled with:
Olive oil
Lemon
Garnish:
Dry basil (sprinkled)
Momma Ren (My mom) should try this out… a super simple, yet elegant and healthy addition to many types of meals. Of course you would throw a curve ball in, other wise it wouldn't be a true Momma Ren dish.
We had saved the best for last at these baths and before we left we entered into the only Sauna that this place had and got plenty toasty. Then of course we plomped into the cold water tub afterwords that sits right ouside. Yay! Repeat - We did this a few times.
The cab on the way home charged us 2xs as much as cab on the way there, so I just paid him the same as the other cab but a small bit more and he got extremely mad. But hey, I say don't get mad at the people on which your scam doesn't work buddy, be apologetic. He definitely wasn't. I figured out one way that the cabs rip people off too. When you get to your destination the driver often will just sit there and won't say anything to you, even for minutes at a time. At this point you should be ready to pay because you would have found the meter (when you entered the cab) and then handed him appropriate change. If you ask how much it is, then they assume you don't see the meter. At this point they can make whatever number up and try to charge you. On a cab ride later in the day, even when I did see the meter and handed him about the correct amount of money, he handed me the wrong change back and even said the number confidently to me as he handed it over. Actions like this only hurt their business in my opinion because in the long run people will, instead of taking a taxi and dealing with the BS/stress/annoyance of scams, just walk or take a metro or bus when confronted with the option.
So we headed up to our pad, got changed, and headed out to meet a group for Caving. Under the city of Budapest is a series of tunnels and caves that go 100 meters under the ground. A lot of the water used for the various Baths throughout the city make these caves able to be done deeper than normal. Also cool are the scuba divers daily going into the water near the bridges and diving down into various caves and such as well [only expert divers would be allowed, not me :( ].
Our newfound group took a bus trip about 20 minutes through the city to the outer rim and got suited up. (below pic with Herald, one of our new caving buddies from Norway)
The guide we had was pretty cool and we soon entered the caves of Budapest through a little door in the side of a hill.
Upon entering the caves immediately temperature was noticeably cooler and welcomed from the heat outside. We quickly learned that the caves used to be used as a bomb shelter and found a small "chapel" room in the caves.
Not knowing what to expect, and everyone at least a bit nervous about what we were getting into, our guide expertly began making us feel comfortable with stops along the way with commentary and cool stories. When done with his comments for the area, he would shoot into a small entrance, sometimes that we didn't even know about, and then we would one by one follow. There were about 10 of us in the group and we all bonded a bit as time went on.
We saw roots from plants that had gone down through holes in the rocks over 30 meters, just to get access to the environment. We saw crystalized calcium calcite, and squeezed down into holes feet first where we couldn't feel the bottom, climbed up a bit using rock climbing (rating like 5.7 tops so nothing hard), and of course did some crawling on hands and knees through some interesting areas. At one point we crawled on our bellies through an area that I had to put one arm down so that I could fit and wriggle and squeeze through it.
Here is Candace going through one on her back!
Our guide told us of a time where the rocks inside shifted and caught a caver unaware. He passed away and the rocks were too heavy to move so they had to leave him there. As time went on the femur bone became visible and you can see it today sticking out of the rocks
We all touched it and made a prayer. Just Kidding! This was just another story our guide told to jokingly play around with us! He was a cool dude and even tied one girl's shoelaces together as she squeezed through a hole and then met her on the other side and blamed it on "the creatures" in the cave. Lol.
We eventually got to the bottom of the cave tour - 55 meters under City Level. After a brief speech, we headed up a different route that curved around and joined with our entry route leading us back to the surface and into the light!
Just before we left there was one more fun thing to do - As you entered the chapel room, you would turn your headlamp off and sit down next to everyone in complete darkness waiting for the next person to stumble into the room and wonder "Where the heck is everyone?!". Usually a slight giggle or laugh by the 4 or 5 people already in the room gave it away, but it was quite amusing when people wandered in and looked around, sometimes mumbling this or that and not knowing we were right there!
Just after that we did another cool thing in that room. Once everyone was in it, our guide had everyone keep their lights off and remain perfectly silent... Now keep in mind that in our world and environments we live in there is always background noise - cars driving by, bugs chirping, air conditioning blowing, even the wind outside through the trees or desert. It is truly an experience to sit in perfect silence...
Getting back to The Maverick we changed and headed out for some more Value Fine Dining! We arrived early to our dinner reservation at Bock Restaurant. The appetizer of Cabbage stuffed with a Fish "tartar" was great, but harder to cut than any steak and definitely required me to furnish my Cutco DD-Edge pocket knife out to save the day.
They had an interesting steak knife they brought out that I could use with my Duck later -
We soon had Goose Liver brought out to our adventurous selves and after a few bites I was not interested anymore. Candace had one bite and proceeded to describe to me that it "reminded me of wet cat food minus the yummy Gravy sputnik loves"
Soon came my highlight of the meal - amazing Prawns in spicy Garlic sauce and I couldn't help but be reminded of Chris Csotty and Bahama Breeze. He used to take me there when I was an Assistant Manager and I had won some sort of contest that we had set up. Just like there, here the Shrimp was grilled with garlic and made spicy with spices. The "butter/oil/spice" that it was in was delicious enough and with little chunks of garlic in it was the perfect dipping for bread. Clean plate club.
I was ready to order another one and mentioned it 5 times more in the meal, but by the time I had eaten my duck in Sour cherry sauce, a rice krispie treat, and we had finished with our perfectly paired wines for both the starters and entree, I was pretty full.
Off to a crazy night club/bar/uniquePlaceLikeNothingElse The Enchanted Forest. Also known as Instant, this place had 23 rooms all with a different installation and environment. Along the way we found an interesting statue to check out that created a bench with a guy on it, a Cigar in his hand, and a brass computer on the right side of the statue on the stone/cement -
Upon entering Instant we came upon the main room -
Luckily we had gotten there early (around midnight) and walked each of the 23 rooms getting pics and checking out the craziness. Every room had its own thing going on. Though my flash here in this pic almost certainly ruins the lighting/atmosphere, at least you can get an Idea.
Candace and I thought about how perfect a place like this would be for Grand Rapids with all the colleges, because it was totally a cool place to go during the day and "have your own" room, or share it with a couple people and get work done.
We were glad we could check the place out before it was packed. Once everyone was packed in, we went to a couple favorite rooms again then headed out passing the Bike rack/garden room with retractable roof that even though it was closed and people were smoking, the smoke wasn't bothersome.
We were having our Innovator conversations throughout the night about cool things we could have as part of our house or in a club that we could start and what city we would have it in and why and continued our conversations in the taxi home. We talked about about different ways to make money with businesses that would allow us to travel, and have houses in different places. We talked about 3 businesses in 3 countries and then determined those locations Could be Phoenix, Barcelona, Paris. We would somehow get work Visas and live in Paris for July, August, September. Barcelona for April, May, June. Phoenix for October through March. We would visit Michigan for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and still get to Maine for a couple weeks each year. One business would be AirBNB and could be run from all 3 locations and would involve the renting out the other two places while we are staying at whichever location was "home". Candace is excited to run that, and possibly expand that to having another property or so at each City, having a small "staff" of maid and local student to help with checkins and cleanings in the cities. I could expand Cutco into the other two countries on a secret test program, since I already am fluent at Spanish and wouldn't mind learning French. Or just run two other businesses instead and hire presidents to manage them, kind of like this guy was doing who we met in Amsterdam last night.
Candace - Each house would have a Jewelry bench and a few tools bringing only a small tool kit back and forth. We would lock up and store my bench and a few personal belongings in for safe keepings while we were away.
Other wise each place is fully furnished, vitamix and cutco for all the houses.
Me - We discussed this, among other things, laying in bed late at night. As I dozed off, Candace's brain kept churning and she had: "crazy ideas for my jewelry line, sketches and business/ marketing plans. Making and keeping connections with stores to sell my goods all over Europe.
*Tokyo, Australia, Hawaii, Paris, Milan, London, Barcelona, Italy, Prague, Switzerland, Bali
*Learning new techniques in Bali
*Thoughtful nights sleep"
On the train over to Prague we utilized our time once again on the train to work on picture organization, videos, and writing blog for Munich. Candace did her summary of Budapest so I wouldn't miss any events that happened, and then she organized pics and videos and did some sketching for Jewlery. I wrote on the blog all the while listening to Grace Cook's music she gave me over 2 years ago that I hadn't sorted through. Already having done this earlier with some Katen's music, Graces is taking longer. Overall around 50 new songs so far I'm listening and enjoying! YAY. I must admit it takes forever to listen to and decide Yay or Nay on hundreds of songs. But worth it in the end when you've kept only the ones you don't just think are OK, but really like, and end up expanding your collection in a good way! Here we are ready to Czech out Prague!
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