9/25/11 Budapest Days 4 and 5

Yes, there was a day 4 in Budapest. We had planned to go to a little beach town on Lake Boloton and spend one night there. Instead, we decided to enjoy Budapest for 2 more days for a couple reasons. First, we were too lazy to wake up super early to see yet another beach town with yet another promenade (now we are truly on vacation). Secondly, Levka wanted to go caving [note from Levka – yeah, baby!] under Budapest.

Julie got tired of typing, so it's my turn now.

Good thing we stayed an extra day to explore the city ourselves a bit more.  Since we covered the Pest side quite extensively (most of the good, and cheap food is there), we went up Gellert hill on the Buda side.  That's the one with Liberation monument on top - a woman bearing a palm leaf built by the communists after the defeat of the Nazi's.  At the bottom of the hill we went inside an unusual church embeded in the cave.  From the hill we went down to the embarkment of Danube river, and walked alongside of it towards the island where we spent a bit of time walking around, chilling, eating, and reading.  Then we walked back to the hostel discovering more of beautiful local architecture.

Julie again: On the last day we went caving. But caving wasn’t happening till late afternoon and we had a morning to kill. So we sat in the park all morning reading books. Compromising is awesome! Fine, maybe it’s not the most exciting thing to do in the new country, but it was perfect nonetheless.

And me again: caving would've been a lot more fun if the guide was as good as the one we had back in California Caverns.  Also it'd be more comfortable if the suit was not riding up my tuchis and the nearby important areas. Nevertheless it was a lot of fun.  A guide would give some instructions to us as to how to squeeze into the next whole, which were hard to understand due to his accent, and then literally dive, or jump in.  That part was very entertaining for the whole group. 

The next day we caught a train to Cluj-Napoca, our first destination in Romania. 

2011.09.22 Budapest