Arriving in Budapest, Hungary, the first thing we noticed was that everything was a bit more dated (read: older) than many other European cities we'd visited so far. Their metro was built during the communist era and is one of the oldest still operating today. A shaky ride, but it got us to our destinations.
Budapest is a beautiful city that still holds its historical European roots quite well, with the grand Danube River separating the Buda and Pest sides of the city. We crossed the chain bridge, walked up Castle Hill and toured the Budapest History Museum, which was once the Buda Palace.
We sampled an amazing Hungarian funnel cake; it was so good that our goal is to try and replicate it when we get back home (we'll let you know if we're successful).
In addition, we sampled a few different goulash dishes accompanied with various dumplings, which didn't disappoint. Over the next few days we explored Heroes Square and the big City Park, stumbling upon the Vajdahunyat Castle.
Heroes Square
We explored the old town area containing a cool clock and stumbled upon the main shopping district. We even came across a recently-opened Patagonia outlet store, which had unbelievable prices! The fact that the weather was getting chilly, and we each only had one measly fleece jacket, easily justified our purchase of another warm outer layer each. And shopping makes you thirsty, so of course we had to pop into one of the local pubs to try delicious and cheap Czech beers (where the original Budweiser comes from). Our clothes needed some laundering, but it ended up being the most expensive laundry we've ever done! - about $13 for a large load! So a note to future Prague travelers: skip the laundry and stick to the cheap beer!
We walked around the Prague Castle, browsed the inside of the beautiful St. Vitus cathedral, and then explored the quieter Lesser Town. We also explored the grounds of Vysehrad Castle, which was a couple minutes from our apartment and had amazing views of the city. We spent six wonderful nights in Prague, but we had somewhere to be.
We had booked a flight on Ryanair from Wroclaw (pronounced frawt-suave), Poland to Brussels, Belgium for practically nothing, but first we had to get to Wroclaw. Bus is the only option from Prague, and we guess it's not too popular, because when we saw our bus we thought "No, that can't be it." But it was - an ancient-looking Russian bus with 4 "drivers" chain smoking in the front. Luckily, no smoking was allowed in the passenger area, and the drive was uneventful, but we weren't sure what to expect in Wroclaw. We only stayed two nights, but ended up really liking what we saw of the university town, even through the rain.
The city has an unusal attraction - dwarf statues. The reason for these lies with the Orange Alternative, an anti-communist movement that took place in the 1980's where dwarf paintings covered up communist slogans. Since then, a local artist has placed over 30 miniature sculptures of different dwarves throughout the city. We even bought a map of the all the locations of them, so we set off on a dwarf hunt! We didn't find all of them (one is supposedly underneath a seat in a movie theater), but found most, and it ended up being an excellent way to see the city.
In addition to hunting dwarves, we visited the famous Raclawicka Panorama, a 360 degree painting depicting one of the most courageous battles in Poland's history. We also got breathtaking views of the city from the top of the Wiez Katedralnych (cathedral) and tasted some perogi ruski at a market hall.
All too quickly we were on the move again, with a quick flight to Brussels. We weren't impressed with Brussels; it was just another big city with lots of people everywhere. It did, however, offer a wide range of shopping for chocoholics and beer connoisseurs alike, in addition to having a good variety of restaurants. We ate at a little family-run Thai-Vietnamese restaurant that brought back familiar flavors, and also had some tasty mussels at the famous Chez Leon, where they go through a ton of mussels a day!
Anna found a liking for the Mort Subite Kriek (cherry) beer while Ryan favored the Westmalls Double Brown beer, just a few of the Belgian beers we sampled at a pub called Mort Subite.
All this was really just an introduction to what we'd find in Bruges. An hour after hopping on the train there, we found ourselves wandering the streets of Bruges in search of our hostel. We found it, unfortunately, because it turned out to be one of the worst hostels we've stayed in, but we cancelled one night and changed to the nice family-run Hotel Nicolas on our third and final night.
Bruges did not disappoint - the town is unbelievabley picturesque with old Flemish architecture, endless bridges crossing the many canals
and quadruple the amount of chocolate shops that were in Brussels! We got a complimentary tour of the recently built concert hall, saw Michaelangelo's “Madonna and Child” sculpture (one of his few works outside of Italy)
and “toured” some of the pubs while trying to escape the constant threat of rain. In a close tie with Prague, Bruges is our favorite spot in Europe.
With less than one week left, we had one last place to visit: the grand city of London. We stayed with some friends that we had met in Egypt (well, Ryan had. Anna had food poisoning at that point), Abner and Rachel, who treated us to traditional cottage pie for our first dinner in London. Delicious! They were extremely kind in letting us stay in their flat.
Abner walked with us around a lot of the city our first day there, and for the next four days we continued doing the same. With the dollar being so weak, most of the attractions were out of our budget; however, a neat thing about London is that many of the museums are free. We explored the Tate Modern, the Museum of London, and the Natural History Museum.
We waited with the masses for the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace:
saw Big Ben:
and the London Bridge (not what you think!):
Tower Bridge (what you think of):
and stumbled upon the premiere of "Fantastic Mr. Fox," where we saw George Clooney, Bill Murray, Cindy Crawford, and Jason Schwartzman walk the red carpet to the theater (who knew we'd have to fly all the way around the world to see movie stars in London...go figure).
We also met up and had a great dinner with one of Ryan's high school friends Alexis, who we also stayed with on our last night. We are typically not fans of big cities, but London was an exception. It was also a fantastic place to end our trip as it is influenced by so many different worldwide cultures, and really made us think back to all the great memories we've had over the past year.
The day has come however. We flew an uneventful 10-hour flight back home, and now have the task of fitting back into the world that we left.
This has been an utterly amazing life-changing adventure, and we will never forget all the wonderful people and places we've encountered and loved.
We hope you've enjoyed reading our blog as much as
we've enjoyed experiencing and sharing it.
Ryan and Anna
A few stats about our year-long around-the-world trip:
- Number of photos taken: over 10,000
- Number of trains taken: 18 (overnight trains: 5)
- Number of boats: 20
- Number of times Ryan shaved: 7
- Number of flights: 19
- Number of buses/minibuses: 50 (overnight buses: 4)
- Number of times slept in car: 1
- Kilometers driven: over 21,000
- Number of times driving a Spaceship: 1
Mmm.
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