Budapest

This weekend was another trip to a European capital city, Budapest, Hungary. As usual, it was very cool to see a new country and culture, and Budapest proved to be a nice relaxing town for a weekend trip.

I got in late Friday night, and after finishing up a little work and waiting for a little while, Becky got in and we headed into the city. It was too late to do anything then, but they next day we got an early start by heading to one of the city's famous coffeehouses, Gerbeaud, and grabbing some coffee and breakfast. Then we headed to St. Stephen's Basilica and up one of the nice shopping streets of the city, Andrassy ut, to Hero's Square and the city park.

St Stephen's Basilica

inside

Opera House

Hero's Square

After some nice drinks in the park we headed to the Danube River and down, seeing the Parliament building and the "shoes" memorial - a pretty cool and simple WWII memorial. After a little rest we went a a traditional Hungarian restaurant in the city center, which had a "gypsy band" playing and some delicious Hungarian food. The gypsy band idea sounded like it might be kind of annoying, but it was actually really cool - not too loud and not obnoxious, actually provided some nice background for dinner. When we were done we went out to the river to check it out at night, which was cool with all the bridges and buildings lit up. We also stumbled upon the BCG Budapest office!

Parliament building

the shoes memorial

BCG!

Buda Castle at night

Sunday ended up being pretty grey and rainy, but that was ok because we were planning to go to one of the public baths in the city. They're Turkish style baths with lots of indoor and outdoor pools of varying temperatures and saunas and everything, a remnant of when Turkey ruled the country. It was a very unique and pretty cool experience - it's a big stately-looking building with pools everywhere inside and out. We started in one of the warm outdoor pools then went in and sampled a bunch of the different pools and saunas. It was a really large complex, and there were actually a ton of people there. Afterwards I was super relaxed which was good after a day full of walking around the city before. We then went back to Gerbeaud to get some delicious ice cream, and checked out the Buda side of the river (the west side is Buda, the east side is Pest) for a bit before heading to the airport.

the Szechenyi baths

Parliament from the Buda side of the river

Another cool weekend, another awesome city!