We said goodbye to Lucyna in Krakow, hopped back on the FlixBus, and made our way down to Vienna, Austria.  We spent a few days in Vienna but mostly catching up on rest and catching up on the blog in our hotel room.  While Vienna is a beautiful city full of amazing architecture and endless museums, we did not do much exploring here.  We had our sights set on our next destination.

We arrived in Budapest on August 6th.  We had read and heard so many wonderful things about this city that we could not wait to start exploring.  And it did not disappoint.  

The architecture, the goulash, the friendly people, the thermal baths…Budapest is truly a European paradise.  For the first time on our trip, we took advantage of the touristy hop-on-hop-off bus, and it ended up being a great deal.  For about $30, you get 24 hours to ride, 2 beers, 1 meal, and a boat tour.  The bus ride gave us our first big glimpse of the city, stopping at all the major sites.

We next hit the renowned thermal baths for a day of pampering spa treatment: the city sits on over 100 underground thermal springs, so there are plenty to choose from.  We settled on Széchenyi since it had the best reviews on TripAdvisor.  The bath has 21 different indoor and outdoor pools of all different temperatures.  It was really crowded but still made for a fun day.

We met a really cool fellow backpacker named Justin on the FlixBus who told us about an upcoming festival called Sziget Festival.  As soon as we pulled up the line-up and saw Bad Religion and Galantis on the same day, we were in.

The big highlight of the trip to Budapest was that my sister Jessica joined us for the last couple of weeks of our European tour.  She arrived just in time for Sziget Festival and we couldn’t resist visiting the thermal spas once more.

We had a blast in Budapest.  We definitely recommend this city to everyone and can’t wait to come back.  We called our trusty FlixBus and the three of us set off for our next destination…Split, Croatia!

 

This entry was posted in Destinations