Easter in Budapest!

Well I apologize it's taking me so long to get everything from my notebook to my computer, I've been lacking in motivation lately. And I've been doing school work. sort of.

Anyways, I decided that blogging is a great method of procrastination and since I don't want to study anymore (because, really, the test I have to study for is annoying, I'm not being tested on my knowledge of anything, just on my quality of writing in French, so I really can't study anyways! boo.) so here's another day. What is this, day 4? Yeah, ok day 4 of my vaca (day 4 of... 11ish, 12 if you count the day I came home).

Sunday, 4/4 Easter!!

Yayyyy Easter. We all woke up at or around 830 and got ready to check out, showering, eating bfast, packing, etc. We got dressed for church (I wore a cute little sundress with leggings and a cardi) and we checked out. In addition to my church clothes, I also brought jeans and my brown shoes with me in a plastic bag so I could change after church because I didnt want to be running all over Buda (our plan for the day) in my flats and dress. So then we went to Mass at 11 at a Scottish Church because it was in English and we were all dying to have a service in our native language. However, it turned out to be Presbyterian. Oops! Oh well, it was a good service and the priest (is he still a priest in the Presbyterian Church?) and congregation were *so* welcoming. It was a rather long service and I actually didn't really like the homily (it was more like a Bible study of the passage, line by line interpretation. I'm a fan of the "big picture" type sermon à la the Catholic Church), but oh well, it was cool nonetheless. During the service, the priest took out some puppets and put on a little show for the kids so they would understand what was going on too - that part was in both Hungarian and English so it was funny and adorable. After mass there were cookies and coffee and tea and a free lunch that we were welcomed to stay for. However, as much as I love free food (a LOT) and as much as I wanted to stay and talk to the people who were so incredibly nice to us, I really wanted to see the other side of the city, the Buda side. So Caitlin, Olivia and I decided to forego the free food and head for the hills instead. Well, we changed first, then we headed for said hills.

We started by walking to the Chain Bridge, which is the oldest bridge in Budapest (or something like that) and then we walked across, snapping pics along the way of course :) We walked to Fisherman's Bastion, which had amazing views, but was under construction so I was a little disappointed :( Oh well. While we were there, we saw St. Matthias Church. We didn't go in because at this point, all the big beautiful churches and cathedrals and basilicas are starting to look alike. We basically walked from the middle of Buda starting from Fisherman's Bastion, to the Southern end, the Liberty monument and hit most of the major tourist attractions along the way. After the bastion and the church, we walked by the Palace (we think) and the Parliament (we know). We were walking by ruins and we were supposed to be walking by the Palace, so we assumed the ruins were the Palace. That's why we weren't sure. Then we climbed to the top of the Liberty monument and man, I am out of shape! That climb was rough... i'm not looking forward to climbing up the million dollar stairs again after that embarrassment. But, the view was pretty spectacular. You could literally see everything. And the visibility was good too, sunny, not too many clouds and no fog or anything obscuring the view. We had some time to kill then (mostly because we booked it through the earlier attractions of Buda) so we decided to pretend we were (don't judge) models/flower children and took "artistic" pics of ourselves. It was funny and amusing and great and all that because we were just being ridiculous (go check out my pics to see what I mean). From there we walked back down, all the while taking pictures of flowers or picking flowers to put in our hair or just generally continuing our "flower children" state of mind. We got to the bottom and walked back to the Pest side via the green bridge (I don't know its real name lol). Funny story: the three of us are just walking along in Pest, minding our own business when Olivia runs across someone she thinks she recognizes. She does a double take, just as he's doing a double take also, then they both realize who the other is and go, "Oh my god it's you!" It was a guy who used to go to BC but transferred to Columbia after freshman year. His name was Kyle and I actually met him a few times, but it took me awhile to remember where (in the Choco Bar). Hilarious. He's currently studying abroad in Budapest and said he loves it. Funny how small the wold is, sometimes.

Anyways, we continued walking to the restaurant where we were meeting Erin and Beria. We were about 5 min late, as usual, but its ok they were right on time so not waiting long. Caitlin and I had found a restaurant that was a Hungarian buffet the night before, so we decided to eat there for our Easter dinner. We got a bottle of champagne and shared it and then we started going at the food. They had appetizers, sides, meats, cheeses, a grill where you could get all different kinds of meat cooked (I got some beef, venison, chicken and turkey I think) and DESSERT. They had tiramisu, some kind of custardy thing, little pieces of different kinds of cakes, chocolate sauce, fruit, and oh jeez I'm getting hungry all over again just from thinking about it! so yeah, we stuffed ourselves and then rolled back to the hostel to pick up our bags to get to the airport.

We got to the airport in plenty of time and sat around talking for awhile. Then we went to our respective gates (Erin, Caitlin, Beria and I to ours and Olivia to hers because she was flying back to Spain). Our gate contained annoying, loud women who I swear were in their 30s but dressed like they were 15. Think, Juicy monochrome velour jumpsuits with teddy bears. Oh and they had bleach blonde hair, about an inch of make up on and were *blaring* techno club music. The cherry on top was when they glared at us like we were doing something wrong when all we did was sit there. We weren't even glaring at them! although I did have the urge to go sit with them and chit chat, just to see their reaction. But I didn't want to get on their pimp's bad side, so I refrained. (I really think they were either escorts, prostitutes or were with members of the Hungarian mafia. not quite sure why... but oh well).

We got on our plane, flew to Istanbul and landed without any major incident. In the Istanbul Airport we got our visitor's visa and picked up my bag then got a cab back to erin's where we all passed out.

[Flash to real life:] Still refusing to do work, now I'm sitting outside on the porch because its a beautiful day and I figure I'll just keep going.

Monday, 4/5 Istanbul!!

We slept in pretty late (till like 11ish I think) and then got up to meet Erin's friends for lunch/our breakfast at a café called Wonderland, where its based off of, you guessed it, Alice in Wonderland. it was cool inside and they had really good food. I got a chicken wrap that was nice and spicy (I feel like I tried to get everything spicy that I could find on this trip because we never have spicy food in France). After that we went to get Erin's ID card, we saw her school, and I am so jealous because not only does she have the most amazing view of the Bosphorus, but she has a campus! With green areas! And students lounging! Lol, it really reminded me of the dustbowl at BC. Anyways, we realized we needed caffeine, so we got some coffee and then headed to Sultanahmet, the touristy area. We went to see the Hagia Sofia, which was closed because it was Monday, so we walked about 100 yards to the Blue Mosque. I've never been inside a mosque before so that was really cool. The architecture is really different also, its all about domes and those pointy things on the outside (the name escapes me right now...) and not about arches and towers, like Catholic cathedrals. To go inside, we had to cover our shoulders and take off our shoes, which we carried in little bags until we exited. Then from there we walked like 200 yards to the Cisterns, which were cool too, but not really my thing. They used to pump water to the Palaces, I think. Anyways, check out the pics for both the Blue Mosque and the Cisterns.

After that we met Beria, who took us to the Grand Bazaar. It was amazing, it was huge and you could get lost in there, but we didn't because we had Beria :) the people there are funny too, they try to hit on you to get you to buy their goods and their favorite line to Caitlin was, "wait, you dropped something! [pause] My heart!" and then they'd crack up. After that happened about 3 times, after they said you dropped something, she replied, what? your heart? and they stopped laughing. Yeah, so that was funny, and bargaining was a different experience, especially if you picked up something that you weren't actually interested in. I picked up a fake Gucci leather wallet which the vender originally tried to sell to me for 30 YTL (new turkish lira) and I wasn't actually that interested in buying it, but he kept lowering his price whenever I tried to say no thank you. Most people only went down to maybe 60% of the original asking price but he went all the way down to 10 YTL as I was finally walking away. I did buy some things, though. I got a pretty blue scarf and some gifts for people. Caitlin got 3 jerseys and 2 scarves, Beria got silver earrings and a ring and Erin got a scarf for her mom.

From there it was another short walk to the Spice Bazaar, which I might've liked even more than the Grand Bazaar because there were free samples of turkish delight! We bought two boxes of them for later that night too :)

Then we walked across the Galata Bridge and took pics of the pretty sunset. At the end of the bridge, we got on the tram and took it to Tophane, where we went and smoked Nargile (hookah) and got wraps and some kind of cheesy bread type thing, both of which were really good. I also learned how to play Tavla (backgammon) and played against Beria a few times. We also got çay (tea, pronounced chai) and the Nargile lasted awhile, we were all feeling it when it finally ran out and we headed home.

All in all, a great first day in Istanbul, much more to come soon, I'll try to update again tomorrow :)

bises~