This weekend (honestly these last two weeks!) was chock full of adventure! Me and my friends Gracie and Allison embarked on a creative itinerary that took us through Hungary, Czechia, and Slovakia in just four days. The weekend started for me at 5:30am on Thursday, when I woke up to shower and catch the 6:30am metro to the 7:00am bus to the 9:25am flight. After some last-minute airport confusion we arrived at our gate and sat down to actually think about what we wanted to do on our trip. We used a style of trip planning that is not really planning at all and is probably more appropriate to call the Google Maps Checklist. All three of us looked up buildings/places that seemed cool and starred them on google maps, and then each morning we planned out what made sense to see that day.

The flight was relatively fine, and I absolutely loved the Budapest airport when we got there! It reminded me a little bit of Iceland: clean and orderly, with simple modern decorations. We took a bus into the city center and went to Fat Mama’s for lunch on a recommendation from one of my classmates who’d visited Budapest a few weekends before. After a little more walking around we checked into our hostel, Maverick Central Market, which we all loved. It was probably a 20 minute walk from the city center, but well worth it: they had free water, a guitar (with one broken string but the thought was there), free luggage storage for the next day, and the room and bathrooms felt very clean and cozy. I put Gracie and Allison down for a quick (by quick I mean two hour-long) nap, and then left to walk around Budapest.

As I’ve gotten older, I think I’ve become more and more like my mom with her (very small) range of acceptable temperatures. If I’m not wearing a sweatshirt and its not at least 70 degrees outside, you’ll probably find me wrapped up in a fuzzy blanket or, more likely, fantasizing about having a fuzzy blanket to wrap myself in. That is to say that I was very brave (or just cheap and not wanting to buy an entire winter coat for a four day trip) facing the rainy Hungarian 35 degrees with my windbreaker and no umbrella. Alas the bravery attempt failed me pretty quickly. I packed an insane amount of layers, so many that if I was wearing them all my backpack would have been empty, but I realized that no matter how many t-shirts you put on you’re still going to be cold. Thankfully I ran into a thrift shop while walking around and found a slightly oversized pink puffer jacket for just 4,172 Forint, or 11 Euros. A few minutes later it was mine and was already serving a double purpose as a rain jacket (although it was admittedly failing at that and definitely just making me colder).

I saw some more sights including a giant market, then returned to the hostel to pick my nappers up for the next leg of our day. We had an hour walk over to the port to meet the boat for our unlimited Prosecco cruise, but we extended the route a little to hit some sights we wanted to see along the way. 9 times out of 10 I love a good walk, but I was honestly dying during this one. It was cold and raining decently hard, I was only wearing a few of my layers (one pair of pants and two shirts), my new puffer jacket had become more of a cold soggy blanket that I had to drag with me, and the umbrella I’d “borrowed” from the hostel (because OF COURSE I decided I wasn’t going to need the beautiful, working rainbow umbrella I’d bought two weekends ago in Portugal) looked like a prank you would play on someone you really hated if they were stuck out in the rain. It had spokes randomly sticking out everywhere and half of the umbrella was sagging under its own weight and kept dumping water on me. By the time we got to the cruise, literally all I cared about was stepping into the cabin of the boat where I could be warm and dry (I eventually got warm-ish, but was never fully dry because wet jeans sadly don’t work like that).

One sip was enough to inform myself that I hated Prosecco, but I didn’t hate it as much as other alcohols I’ve tried so I drank a glass and then another glass, really really slowly and mixed with lemonade (the lemonade wasn’t good either). My favorite part was the atmosphere of the boat itself: it was very romantic with dimmed lights, slow tunes playing and roses on the table. Approximately every 1.5 minutes the Prosecco guy would saunter over and top your glass off. We were sitting at one of the best tables and got to see the beautiful lit up Parliament building through the rainy window (the rain kinda destroyed all chances of a good picture) and some other monuments that I don’t remember the names of. For all the romantic, chill vibes, it was obvious they were trying to shove as many people through this tour per night as possible, so after just barely an hour of cruising they kindly requested we leave in the most forceful way possible and we were standing back out on the windy, rainy, cold dock just like we’d started.

Actually it wasn’t just liked we’d started: Gracie and Allison were now under the influence of 6 or 7 glasses of Prosecco, and you could tell. Things stared to get real funny real quick, and we heard some very interesting stories. Gracie and Allison decided that we should probably get dinner before going back to the hostel, and put me in charge of getting us someplace. Definitely a good decision. I shepherded my giggly children back to the main street lined with restaurants, and then had a really hard time finding anywhere that seemed suitable for our group in our current situation. We eventually walked past this little gyro shop that had a slightly separated dining room and no other customers and my companions seemed good with it so we went in. I immediately regretted that decision, as I was a bit sketched out by the inside of the restaurant. I ordered a falafel wrap thing that I also immediately regretted ordering because I realized I wasn’t going to want to eat anything from this place. It ended up being fine because it came with Tzatziki sauce so I wouldn’t have wanted to eat it anyways, so Gracie ate it for me because she loves Tzatziki sauce. Allison got some french fries that made her throw up in the middle of the night (making me think that maybe my sense about that place was wise after all…).

After a very loud dinner during which I’m sure we were annoying the guy working there to death, we Ubered back to our hostel (none of us felt like enduring that horrible freezing cold hour walk again, especially at night) and went to bed. Good night!