Day 11: Budapest - Castle Hill

With Rachel as our trusty tour guide (with her Fodor's book in hand), we set out to explore the Buda-side of the city, in particular "Castle Hill."

As masters of the public transportation, but also quite poor, we decided against the day-pass and instead split a packet of 10 tickets. Since a single ticket does NOT include transfers, we did our best to find the routes that could get us there as simply as possible (although, we definitely took one bus for like, 55 minutes until it looped around the entire city because it avoided a transfer and wasted bus ticket).

We began the day walking around up on the "hill" taking in some old churches, the military history museum, and walking along the streets with beautiful views of both the Buda hills and the other side of the river (including the amazing Parliament building). Also high on the list of things that were great- the "Hungarian funnel cake" which is covered in chocolate/cinnamon/sugar. Rachel claims she is going to figure out how to make this, although we are clearly lacking the special rotisserie ovens that seem to be necessary for this operation.

After several nice hours walking around on the hill, the sun finally came out and we decided to make a trip to Marguerite Island, a 2.5km island in the middle of the river. It is basically a giant park with beautiful manicured lawns, soccer fields, swimming pools, bike trails, and even one of the old baths. We spent another couple of hours walking around here, and sitting on the grass reading and talking before heading back to the hostel to cook dinner.

It was a calm evening, and we enjoyed sitting around talking with the other people in the hostel, and reading our trashy novels until it was time for bed.