Having a Blast in Budapest

So much has happened in the last few days!  I have been hanging out with my Danish friends and met also a gal and guy from England, so all seven of us have been doing it up in Budapest.

The first night we checked out some outdoor beach club and stayed out having fun.  The next day I had already prebooked at another hostel, so checked out and headed to it on the Buda side, but since everyone else is still at the first hostel, I have not spent much time at the new hostel.  In fact, I paid for three nights, dropped my stuff, took a shower and did not return til the next day. I ended up crashing again at the first hostel, and luckily the hostel owner didn't get mad and charge me for the night.

Anyway, after checking out and getting ready for the day, I set out for the palace on the Buda side as I was told there was a festival going on there.  As soon as I arrived, I spotted Thor and Jannik (I'm finally able to pronounce their names!).  So I hung with them for the afternoon, checking out all the vendors and crafts on display for the festival.  The boys decided we should have an ugly contest, so we gave ourselves 1000 Fts as a limit, about five bucks, to buy the ugliest thing we could find and whoever had the ugliest one, would win.  After we all bought our stuff, we polled passersby that could speak English and got votes.  I won with 4 out of 5 votes!  What I won, however, was all the ugly stuff we bought.

From there we checked out a museum on the palace grounds and then set off to meet the others on Margrit Island.  Before meeting them, we decided to rent a bike and tour the island.  It was one of those car like ones, where two pedaled and the middle passenger chilled.  We took turns on that.  It was so fun.  We did a bit of off roading and then pulled up to a cart and ordered up some beers for our ride.  When the hour was up, we met everyone at the fountain and chilled in the grass drinking beers.

We headed back to the hostel (the one I had checked out of).  The owner was surprised to see me.  We chilled for a bit and then set out for a pub crawl.  It was a sad pub crawl, only making it to three bars, but part of the problem was the huge downpour which limited how far we were willing to go.

  We met some crazy English gal in the first bar whose hubby Bob was out of it, and she was trying to get him to put his shoes on.  She was very excited I was from the States because they were planning a trip to Vegas.  She kept kissing me on the cheeks in excitement.  The second pub across the street is where we met even whackier folks.  Thor is very friendly, and he couldn't have picked a kookier group of Hungarians to chat up.  One was Norbert, who looked like a cartoon character in his pink shirt.  His friends were this gal (I won't mention the nickname for her) and the third guy had this crazy perm and wore a headband.  He also did not want his picture taken but I snuck one somehow.   We danced it up there with them and then found one more bar that was very hot and very packed.  We had enough at that point, so set out to get back the hostel, where I crashed in my old room.

The next day, yesterday, we made plans to hit a pool.  I put in an appearance at my hostel to change into my suit and then made my way back to the island to meet everyone.  Thor and Jonas decided not to join us, but the rest of us hit this place with five different pools and water slides.  We tried out each pool and slide and then soaked it up in the warmer pool until our skin could no longer stand the water.  This place was not as nice as the other bathhouse I went to, but I had more fun with the company.

  Afterwards we met up with Thor and Jonas to grab food.  We ended up stuck in another storm, so found the nearest place to eat.  We had a big Greek dinner, with lots of food and drink, and so much laughter!  Everyone is so much fun and with great senses of humor.  Thor and Jannik wrote down a bunch of very useful (sarcasm there) phrases in Danish in my book, and we exchanged emails since it would be our last night together.  Thor and Christian planned to leave for Bratislava last night, but we were having so much fun they never reached the train station.

After dinner we ducked into the nearest bar that just happened to be a karaoke place.  Yay!  All seven of us sang Bohemian Rhapsody, and the Danish boys took turns singing some of their favorites, including Elvis and Brian Adams.

  Hmm...some locals got down to some Hungarian tunes and even sang a few in English.  From there we hit one more bar, winding down from all the excitement of the last few days.

I finally slept in my hostel last night. I guess they had a toga party earlier, which I missed, but hopefully that means I'll meet some more cool friends to hang with.  It was a really tough goodbye again, but I'll just have to go to Copenhagen to visit!