Adventures in Vienna: Budapest Trip

Last night we got back around 830pm from Budapest!! It was a fantastic trip, that city is awesome.
We stayed at a hostel that was pretty nice-it was basically a huge apartment some guy rented out. The owner was awesome and told us all the perfect places to go in town. Oh and he gave us coupons to a restaurant down the street...we had giant meals for like 6 euro each, it was amazing. There was a guy in the hostel from London who was backpacking from there and hoping to get to Japan, and we met a girl from Australia who is working in Vienna now, so she came along with us on Sunday to sightsee.
Oh...I need to brag for a moment. I got us from the Hungarian train station, through the metro (everything is in hungarian...) and through town to our hostel, without getting lost. So proud:) ... kay, end paragraph.

On Saturday we walked across the bridge to Buda, and explored there. First we climbed a giant, enormous, steep, insanely tall hill for a while to get to the top of Castle Hill. There were flea markets on top so I got some souvenirs...it was a bonus that Budapest is pretty cheap compared to the Euro-they do Forints. So we bought too many scarves and postcards, took hundreds of pictures of the lovely view, then climbed back down to find lunch. We ended up in the cutest cafe. I got white hot chocolate-and it was basically melted chocolate, kind of awesome.

Side note: Europe knows how to do hot chocolate. I'm talking thick chocolatey goodness decorated all nice in a glass cup... It's awesome.

Oh and I got a Clark Salad...heh:)
So we went back to the hostel and rested up a bit, then went to dinner at the place the owner told us about (The Blue Rose...if you are ever in Budapest, go there). I had the best drink of my life there, i forget what it was called though. Afterwards our Australian friend took us to this ruins bar. It was called Simpla I think...but it was seriously awesome. The bar is in a house that was bombed in one of the wars, but not fixed back up at all. Walls are torn down, its just concrete, and pretty much looks like crap. And then they added graffiti and fire lamps and disco balls, there's a dj upstairs on a balcony type thing. Sounds awful, but it was really one of the coolest things I saw in Budapest. You have to go there to understand, I think.
After that, the hostel reception guy invited us out to a bar where there was a Carnaval party, so we hit that up too.

The next day we explored Pest. We went to the House of Terror-a museum about nazism and communism in Hungary. It was really interesting but mellowed us all out...sooo next we went to Heroes Square. It took 20 minutes to get there, all on the same road. We could see the giant statue in Heroes Square the whole time, so it felt like we would never get there. But Heroes Square is basically a pavilion in the middle of the autobahn (highway) that has these huuuge statues of Hungarian Heroes-it's quite cool. As we walked towards it we ended up seeing a flea market right next to that, so we went there. That was pretty sweet-we saw cute little Hungarian people making whatever food it is that they eat a lot...that I can't pronounce and could not identify but looked delicious...and some other things. Then we headed back, not before stopping to eat at an Italian pizza place (also delicious). The train ride back was scary at first- a lot of people had reserved seats for this particular train so we got kicked out of our seats 4 times before finding ones. But it was a 3 hour ride back, and it was nice to just rest after the full day of walking around.

Now I'm back in Wien trudging through the busy week. My schedule is insane, but what else is new. I'm currently debating where to go for Spring Break, and every other weekend:) Suggestions welcome!
Now....pictures:

Downtown Budapest