First day in Budapest

After we got to our hostel in Budapest we were rather tired and felt kind of icky so we each snuck a quick shower, even though we didn’t have our beds yet. The hostel, which is located in an old apparent building in central pest (for those who don’t know, Budapest is split by the Danube into Buda, and Pest) , is a really nice place, clean with a smart design and nice staff.

We left the hostel around 11 and headed to a restuarant for som Goulash brunch. After that we to a walk along Andrassy street, visited the rather disturbing house of terror – a museum of communist and nazi atrocities – and ended up on on Hero’s square. Hero’s square is a big plaza with a bunch of statues and monuments honouring kings of old and other hero’s.  We continues from there to a large park and checked out the castle inside and some famous baths although we didn’t go for a bath since we didn’t have any swimwear.

So instead we headed over to a train station with a name that I can neither pronounce or write, it was a nice old building and we found a small vendor selling sweat breads. We bought a small bag and sat down in the grass for a bit of a rest. From there we continued on to see the parliament building, which was huge, and really awesome to look at. Something that was even better to see was the view of castle hill and the river. We walked along the river front until we came up on a bunch of shoes. It turned out to be a monument over the many Jews that were shot by the river bank so that their bodies would just fall in the river. I think a series of bronze shoes left on the bank is a very appropriate way to honour those people.

That was pretty much the end of the day, we had some dinner, bought some breakfast and went back to the hostel.