Budapest

I think from the moment we rolled into Budapest and we were greeted with a big old beautiful train station, I was hooked. We were back in an area where there was ample food choices, modern amenities, and coffee shops galore. Budapest mixes the old with the new; with many of the historic buildings were well maintained, and new buildings not sticking out like a sore thumb. I wanted to explore every little alley, street, alcove, and building; I felt there were great discoveries around every corner.

This church has a mummified hand of an old king in it. Sadly, our pictures didn't do it justice. Here's a  LINK

 Transit is great in and around the city with above and underground trains and ample buses. But even with that, cycling was a priority to the city as well, with lots of bike lanes, routes, and signals all over the city.

Budapest, and indeed Hungary, is known for it’s thermal baths. We enjoyed one of the famed and quite old baths (name here) and immersed ourselves amongst the droopy saggy breasts and balls, big bellies, every vast pelts, all crammed into speedos; as well as the young and beautiful sipping their beers in thongs and small trunks. The young party singles would enjoy a trip here.

 The city is full of colleges, so there was a great variety of food options and thus, we encountered our first “Mexican” food on the trip. Now, finding quality Mexican food, as many of you know, outside of the Southwestern region states, is a hard task. Harder still if you grew up in those regions. Even if this particular taqueria claimed “mission style” food, we knew it wouldn’t make the mark…but you know what? We didn’t care; we were excited to have some sort of taste of home, however close or off the mark. We did however find an amazing hole in the wall taco joint, Elrapido, in the Jewish quarter that did their own version of Mexican, and by golly, it was tasty.

Mission style, my ass, but you know I ate it!

A church built into the side of a hill. It was a hospital at one point too

There's a great permanent flea market outside of town, with lovely little beauties like these

oldest velodrome in Europe. Greg was giddy

I loved the city so much we stayed for 5 days and even looked at the possibility of staying and extended period of time and the temporary Visa’s involved with that. But then again, the joy at the change of scenery from sparse country to beautiful city, might have swayed my opinion a bit

Cluj Napoca, Transylvania and getting in to Budapest

So very, very, behind on this blog, Oy. Trying to keep up after a long day of riding is tougher than you think. Any who…on with the show!

When last we left you on this blog, Greg got us to Sighisoara. From there we hopped over to the last Romanian city on our Transylvania tour, Cluj Napoca. Whilst there we stayed at a lovely hostel owned by a young Romanian woman and her American boyfriend. Having both a local and a native English speaker show you around were a nice bonus. We did our usual thing when in a town for a few days-walked around like locals, did some sidewalk sightseeing, ate food, saw a movie, and planned our escape from Romania. We decided for yet another train, opting for the quick ad easy route over the Carpathians and past the possibly boring countryside of Hungry (not a lot of towns or campgrounds) into Budapest. The ride was uneventful through lots of fields; basically nothing much to see, so I’m glad we decided on the train.

wise words for a lot

A very tall tower in a park on a hill...

that gave this view

See the dark colors? Yeah, that's why we took trains to Transylvania 

More churches

Vampire culture a plenty in this region

 When we were in Cluj the hostel recommended the salt mines, Salina Turda a few towns over. They run extremely deep and it's utterly other worldly

a simple hobbit entrance

down a kilometer trek into the mountain side

Historic retired mining equipment

And an amusement park of sorts for visitors

Saltwater pond complete with row boats

Salt crystallization forming from the ceilings

This picture doesn't do the scale justice, we were so deep underground

another view of the pond 

Ping pong, Ferris wheel, playground and seating for concerts

a common sight in Transylvania 

We loved this house, it had a secret garden courtyard

Then we left. As mentioned we took a train over the Carpathians, which form a ring around the region, into Budapest. The countryside is beautiful but the ride would've been boring going into Hungary