Last post on the backpacking trip. As I write this I’m chilling at Nathan’s place in London – being minimally touristy. Trip was loads of fun, but it sure is nice not having to carry around a backpack with me all the time, to not have to wear flip flops to the shower, to be able to sleep in a nice bed without being woken up by some other guy snoring, to not have to carry a map around with me all the time – all little things that can be annoying while traveling on the road. Well not really annoying – just not as easy as lounging at a friend’s place and having no real agenda.
Budapest
You know, I’ve heard so many things about Budapest but never really had an image of Budapest in my mind. So when I got to Budapest by myself (Nathan had to stay back in Vienna for a few more hours to wait for his left-behind-on-the-train-backpack to show up at the lost and found at the railway station), I didn’t know what to expect at Budapest. After walking around in the evening, this image now pops up when I think of Budapest:
And of course Budapest wasn’t just the palace on top of the hill, or otherwise Nathan and I would’ve been so bored for the 4 days we spent at Budapest. There was a “House of Terror”, a museum about communism in Hungary, Memento Park, a park with a collection of statues that were situated around the city when the USSR was in power, Szechenyi Baths, a Turkish bath, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and a few other sites. We went at a snail pace (even slower than the norm on our trip already) at Budapest since we had so much time. As for food, by this time we were starting to get sick of Eastern European food…but nonetheless still had some delicious regional cuisine, like goulash, while mixing in Burger King into our diet.
We walked into a Christmas fair on Budapest’s biggest street for tourists/shopping.
In Memento Park. This statue used to be in Budapest, but after communism fell they moved this statue along with others to the outskirts. It was far - we took a public bus to it which took about an hour of travel time each way– but it was pretty cool to see the park.
Szechenyi Baths (photo from some website). I didn’t take any photos for obvious reasons, but the Turkish bath experience was really unique. It was really cold outside (like ~3/4 degrees Celcius) and the main heated “baths” (more like pools) are outside. The place was bigger than I imagined it to be, with three large heated pools (with the hottest being around 36 degrees Celcius), a few smaller interior pools, and some saunas.
As a result of the cold, we scurried in the cold in our boxers from pool to pool, which were filled with people lounging– a very memorable experience. And definitely very relaxing hanging out in the heated pools.
After Budapest, we took a 12 hour overnight train to Brasov, a town in Transylvania, Romania.
Brasov, Bran, and Sighisoara
We stayed at Brasov, a relatively unexciting but pretty city, and took day trips out to Sighisoara and Bran to see an old medieval town and a castle. Nathan thought Sighisoara, which is the birthplace of Vlad, Prince of Wallachia, otherwise known as Dracula, to be quite unworthwhile since it took us about 5 hours round trip to get to a place where we just walked around for 1.5 hours. I thought it to have a nice small old medieval town feel to it making it quite worthwhile despite traveling so much to see it.
Bran Castle, which is what most people go to see in Romania, was quite a cool castle, but nonetheless no what I expected. I expected it to be extremely gothic, but it turned out to be quite tame in terms of the gothic decor. More pretty than intimidating.
Train we took to Sighisoara was a tourist attraction itself – it was reaaally old school.
Bran Castle – not that intimidating/gothic right? Kind of just like a cute little castle on a hill….and I didn’t find any vampires.
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capitol of Romania, and despite being in Romania, a lot of the central parts of the city look like Paris, thanks to the efforts by its communist leader after WWII who had a thing for Paris. Nathan left without really seeing the city since he had to go back to London early to deal with some stuff. I enjoyed walking around the city on a sunny day, marveling at their large administrative building, which is the 2nd largest building in the world after the Pentagon, among other buildings which were quite aesthetically pleasing. I didn’t want to wake up late the next day and miss my flight so I had a grandpa night – sleeping at 9pm.
The Palace of Parliament was humongous, and I have to say despite being built under the reign of a communist (or maybe because it was done under him),it looked pretty good.
Not too shabby buildings in the center of Bucharest.
Sour ox-tripe (stomach) soup – a Romanian specialty and super delicious.
This boulevard is supposed to mimic Paris.
Back in London now, I think I’ve decided that I won’t really take many touristy photos and thus won’t really blog about it. I’m going home to Hong Kong next week so my days traveling are numbered – quite sad but I sure don’t mind home at all!
Guess I’m going to take a break from blogging on my travel blog for a while…but hopefully not too soon because traveling is too fun. Maybe I’ll turn this blog into just my musings about life - just until the next time I travel…
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment