heya first this is going to be a more photo-bloggy post, there's a midnight curfew on internet here in the mandragora hostel in budapest but i don't know how strictly enforced it's gonna be. :) it's a friday night so there's not many people in right now but they did invite us out to the pubs but i was tired and so was cas.. and so we opted to stay in the kitchen and watch spirited away :P


so here's my first picture in budapest, the hungarian goulash that's super famous world-wide. it's not creamy but the beef always has to be tender! we've tried goulash in THREE different restaurants now.. at the red cafe, at fatal and at corso... and fatal is undeniably the best. go to vaci utca 67, it's wonderful but the portions are HUGE so my recommendation is that if there are two people going, take a salad (it's HUGE too) and a main course and a soup, and you'll be full to bursting and you can tapao/takeaway for dinner. haha. that's what we did... only that we got another main course instead of a salad so yeah, full to bursting again.


this is a picture taken from the side of buda... budapest is more like buda and pest (pronounced "pesht") and it's separated by the river danube. the river water's brown, don't be fooled by the photographs because it's just the reflection of the sky! that building in the distance is the parliament house... we were too tired to go across and find it and go inside because really, crossing the bridge from our hostel is really a long walk, and we had that long walk all the way BACK.



here's a photograph of us on the szechenyi bridge (i think)... or it could possibly be a photograph taken from the buda castle itself... gah. after awhile all the photographs blend into one another!


we discovered this WONDERFUL dessert place - people were just popping in for a cake or two, standing up at the bar tables (there were absolutely no chairs) and just leaving in five minutes - check out their selection of cakes at jegbufe and drool to your heart's content.. here cas and i tried the cream cake (bled's is still better) and this confection called the mignon (haha not the filet) and it was delicious. we went back today, in fact, and brought back two other cakes for the other hostelites to try. :p


today we went to the turkish baths at szechenyi... it got really crowded in the middle of the day but anyway because of privacy purposes we couldn't really take photographs. so we spent close to three hours body-watching... haha i say that because it's true! cas and i felt really confident of ourselves after that - i mean, about only 10% were skinnier and more toned than we were. the majority of soakers were the elderly.. i think if i were to retire and had my choice of places to stay.. i'd like either dubrovnik or here, right next to the baths. it's so rejuvenating! :) oh yea, the photograph up there is of heroes' square (i DO hope i've got all these names right), which is on the way towards the turkish baths. we skipped lunch and did the museum nearby too, which had a cool inca exhibition going on. and THEN we got really tired and sleepy - how come that happens all the time these days? we're walking too much i think - and so headed back to the hostel after dinner, which is where i am. take care and i'll post again soon.. heading to bucharest tomorrow night.