Budapest

We arrived in Budapest and made it to our hostel with relative ease. Their currency is the HUF which is roughly $1 = 186Huf, so the math can get a bit confusing. The walk into the area our hostel was located was a bit sketchy. It was behind these two large wooden doors off the main street and up a flight of unlit stairs. Sketchy at first but really cool when we got there. The hostel was more like a apartment converted into a small hotel for about 15 people, no bunk beds, a loft in each bedroom (6 people), a real bathroom, kitchen and living room. Also we just so happened to show up on the night that the owner cooks everyone a traditional Hungarian meal for free. That was served around 8pm and we got there at around 7:15 and had not eaten all day so it was great. It was pieces of chicken with rice with a side of pickles and bread. It was very good and filling.
The following morning we headed out to do the free tour with some of the people from our hostel. The city was very nice and had some great views. A lot of the city had been rebuilt to original standards after it was destroyed in WW2. Budapest is divided into two areas, Buda and Pest. The Danube river divides the two and on the Buda side sits all the old castles, while on the pest side there is more modern buildings and living areas.
Later that day we headed down to the hot spring Baths. We were not sure what to expect at this place, but had heard good things. We must have looked very much like tourist walking down the street with our towel and bathing suite in our hands. The lady at the hostel actually laughed at us a little bit, but we didn't really care, because that's what we are... Tourists. The bath setting was very nice, but not exactly what we had expected. It was mainly elderly people floating around and the all the men wearing speedos. The water was warm and it was relaxing none the less and we got to use our bathing suites at least once this trip!
For dinner we went to a Hungarian restaurant with our new friends Rodrigo (from Chile) and Gavin (from Australia). We had Goulash and Chicken Liver wrapped in Bacon...which wasn't exactly what i expected but it did the job. Rodrigo just ran the Berlin Marathon and decided to travel while he was over here. so we had some good conversations about running so that was pretty cool. He stayed up till about 4am watching Chile play some big soccer match, drinking Coke and pisco (probably not spelled right).
The next morning was the first time we got scammed while in Europe. The subways are pretty messed up in Hungary. You have to buy tickets for every 3 stops you go, but at the time, we didn't know this. After the first 3 stops and heading to the next train we asked a worker here if we were all set to go through to the next train and he said we could go. They don't have subways like at home where as gate will open if u have the right pass. You can just walk on the train not knowing you have the right ticket or not. So we get to the train station and there were workers checking tickets so immediately they see our huge backpacks and ask to see our tickets. We show them the tickets and they start going nuts. Saying we need to pay 12000 HUF because we didn't pay 220 earlier. We told them the story about how a guy lets us through but they didn't want to hear it. So we told them we didn't have any money and they said they would call the police if we didn't pay, so we finally knocked them down to 6000 HUF for the both of us AND when we asked for some type of receipt they said they wouldn't give it to us (because they obviously ended up pocketing it). I'm not trying to knock Europe but this really pissed us off. No one in the US would give 2 innocent tourists that much trouble...most likely because we have more advanced subways that wouldn't let anything like that even happen. But either way Europe gets a downgrade for that move. Gotta Love the US of A. (This is Rodrigo from Chile and his Coke and Pesco...)