<h2>More Like Buda-BEST, Am I Right?</h2><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50%;"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1669812328/IMG_2065_de61098729.jpg" alt="IMG_2065.jpg" srcset="https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1669812339/thumbnail_IMG_2065_de61098729.jpg 208w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1669812364/small_IMG_2065_de61098729.jpg 500w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1669812363/medium_IMG_2065_de61098729.jpg 750w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1669812353/large_IMG_2065_de61098729.jpg 1000w," sizes="100vw"></figure>Before we go any further, I must divulge that I LOVED Budapest. I find when I go to describe each city we visited, I end up sharing mostly positive things because each city in the world truly does have something to recommend it. I am not exaggerating, however, when I say that Budapest rocketed to the tippy top of my personal list. It’s up there with Rome, Amsterdam, and Barcelona, in my opinion. Simply gorgeous. So keep my bias in mind as you read, though I think you’d feel the same way if you visit!Budapest is all about the vibes, and that’s a bit cringy to read, I know, because I’m a millennial, but it’s still true. The city is foggy, atmospheric, absolutely stunning, and somehow still laid back and non-pretentious about the exquisite beauty. We learned on tours that the beauty is because of the former Austro-Hungarian empire; Budapest’s architecture is very similar to Vienna’s because of the Habsburg desire for a cohesive, elegant look through their empire. Let me show you a picture of their Parliament building at night, for example. It’s ALL vibes.&nbsp;We stayed on the Pest side of town; if you weren’t aware, three areas were all combined in 1873 to make up Budapest: Buda, Óbuda, and Pest. Pest is the commerce side, Buda is where the castle is, and Óbuda is “Old Buda” in Hungarian, and site of some ancient remains. Pest houses the Parliament, as shown above, as well as one of the many famous hot baths in town. Buda and Pest are right across the Danube from each other. The weather during our visit in mid-November was chilly and windy, so we ended up opting not to cross into Buda to schlep up the mountain and to the castle. Next time, for sure.I mentioned baths above, and boy, should you plan to go to one when you visit. Regardless of the time of year, it’s worth doing. We chose the Szechenyi Baths, one of the oldest, largest, and most beautiful in town to visit. I found a “beer spa” option on their site, and we signed up to take beer baths. What’s a beer bath, you ask? We hung out in big wooden tubs for an hour that had hops, malt, and beer salt dissolved in pleasantly warm water. We also got to drink ice-cold beer from a tap between the tubs. I highly, highly, highly recommend it.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50%;"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534291/IMG_1375_13002ec1e4.jpg" alt="IMG_1375.jpg" srcset="https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534292/thumbnail_IMG_1375_13002ec1e4.jpg 117w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534293/small_IMG_1375_13002ec1e4.jpg 375w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534293/medium_IMG_1375_13002ec1e4.jpg 563w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534293/large_IMG_1375_13002ec1e4.jpg 750w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h3>Tours!</h3>You know we love a tour, dear reader, and we took two in Budapest. The first was a morning food tour in the lovely Central Market Hall. This hall reminded me of Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, though there’s more breathing room and its history is older.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50%;"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534454/IMG_1400_3492247d1f.jpg" alt="IMG_1400.JPG" srcset="https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534455/thumbnail_IMG_1400_3492247d1f.jpg 208w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534456/small_IMG_1400_3492247d1f.jpg 500w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534456/medium_IMG_1400_3492247d1f.jpg 750w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534455/large_IMG_1400_3492247d1f.jpg 1000w," sizes="100vw"></figure>We started our tour with homemade palinka from our tour guide. Palinka is a local liquor that they claim is a fruit brandy, but it tastes like straight moonshine from a distant relative’s freezer. Put another way, it’s like drinking lighter fluid. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! We then visited several wonderful stalls in the market and ate langos - fried dough with sour cream and shredded cheese on top (delicious, but TMI alert - my stomach did NOT enjoy either time I ate langos). We also sampled several salamis, including horse! AJ thought it tasted like any other salami; I noticed a difference but suspect it was partially a mental block. They told us that horses are never bred to be eaten, rather, if a horse passes away they may make use of it. I still had mixed emotions but still tried to say I had.Our second tour was equally wonderful, though non-food related: we walked around the Jewish Quarter of the city with a local who also took us to a ruin bar!&nbsp;Let’s talk about something sobering for a moment - you may not know the degree to which Hungarians, especially Hungarian Jews, suffered during WWII, and I am morally obligated to enlighten you. An estimated 400,000 Hungarian Jewish people and 28,000 Roma people were slaughtered by the Nazis, either in the barbaric concentration camps or in the city of Budapest itself. A ghetto was erected in the city before those persecuted were taken out to camps, and tens if not hundreds of thousands of victims were killed within those walls in Budapest. We learned about a few men, both foreign diplomats living in the city, who saved lives simply by sheltering Jewish people outside of the ghetto but, of course, this did not negate the horrors of the systematic genocide put in place and carried out by nationalistic monsters.&nbsp;Whew, okay, palate cleanser now, yes?&nbsp;We learned about the gruesome past on our tour, but as previously mentioned, we also went to a ruin bar which was extremely cool. Ruin bars are essentially cool, hipster bars erected in the ruins of an old building around town. The first one was the brain-child of two young men in the 2000s who were tired of corporate life and noticed the dilapidated buildings. The cost of renovating these spots were prohibitive, so these men just went to thrift stores and cobbled together cheap furniture and decorations that exemplified Hungary and Budapest to them. Fun fact - did you know that the Rubik’s Cube was invented by a Hungarian? Now you do! There are Rubik’s Cubes in the ruin bar, nestled among disco balls and other ephemera. We felt extremely punk rock and cool just hanging out in a bar like this, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50%;"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1669812182/IMG_2085_510a029246.jpg" alt="IMG_2085.jpg" srcset="https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1669812182/thumbnail_IMG_2085_510a029246.jpg 208w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1669812184/small_IMG_2085_510a029246.jpg 500w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1669812184/medium_IMG_2085_510a029246.jpg 750w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1669812183/large_IMG_2085_510a029246.jpg 1000w," sizes="100vw"></figure>What else can I tell you about Budapest? Oh, the Christmas market! It came up the day before we left the city, and we were thrilled to see one, even in mid-November. We both ate beef goulash with delicious potato dumplings, washed down with mulled wine, and thoroughly enjoyed every bite.&nbsp;<h2>Ljubljana!</h2>From Hungary, we hopped on a train to Slovenia and accidentally ended up being the only ones on the train for a few of the 6-7 hours. We even got to witness the engine being detached a few times, scooting up on a parallel track before being replaced by a new one. Idk, AJ can tell you exactly what was happening as I was mostly reading and popping my head up once or twice interestedly.&nbsp;<blockquote>AJ Note:As soon as we got outside of Budapest the people started to thin out until we were the only ones in our car for an hour or so. The engine was changed a few times during this long journey and at one point not only were we the only ones in the car, the staff was being changed as well as the engine, so we were alone in an empty Hungarian train station and it had very post apocalyptic movie vibes</blockquote>When we reached Lbubljana, it was nighttime and we were wiped out from our extremely long train ride, and the main thing we noticed was the Dragon Bridge. A note on dragons - we have noticed them among our entire European trip: from&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragestil">Dragestil</a> architecture we noticed in Munich to several cities with extensive dedications to the story of St. George slaying a dragon (Barcelona, Budapest, London). Ljubljana is different, however, calling itself the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.visitljubljana.com/en/visitors/explore/things-to-do/sightseeing/article/ljubljana-city-of-dragons/">City of Dragons</a>. Jason and the Argonauts of Greek mythological fame were said to have encountered the Dragon of Slovenia and slain it during their return to Greece after stealing the golden fleece, and there is an extensive history of a dragon guarding the city of Ljubljana. I’d like to go on record as being pro-dragon. They’re lovely and I’m delighted each time I come across one. Last dragon note (maybe): “Dracul” is Romanian for “dragon.” Dracula’s (fictitious I guess) lineage comes from dragons! Badass, no? I LOVE a folklore crossover.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50%;"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534645/IMG_1444_58766f2813.jpg" alt="IMG_1444.jpg" srcset="https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534645/thumbnail_IMG_1444_58766f2813.jpg 208w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534647/small_IMG_1444_58766f2813.jpg 500w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534646/medium_IMG_1444_58766f2813.jpg 750w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534646/large_IMG_1444_58766f2813.jpg 1000w," sizes="100vw"></figure>Other than very cool dragons, Ljubljana is a fairly small, sleepy town with cobblestone streets and colorful buildings. We mostly stayed to ourselves in our cozy AirBnb here, peppering our days with walks around the city.&nbsp;<h3>Lake Bled</h3>The one Slovenian day trip we took was to Lake Bled - a gorgeous lake with a church in the middle of it, how could we stay away? It took about 90 minutes to drive there and was an easy trek - I’d highly recommend taking a day if you find yourself in the area. We had breakfast (cake and coffee, because vacation) at the Devil Cafe, which was a saucy name but does not reflect the quality or morality of the restaurant and its food, I must say. The cake was a Slovenian cream cake that is well-known, and we both thoroughly enjoyed it.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50%;"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534707/IMG_1454_73a3c6c52f.jpg" alt="IMG_1454.jpg" srcset="https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534708/thumbnail_IMG_1454_73a3c6c52f.jpg 208w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534709/small_IMG_1454_73a3c6c52f.jpg 500w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534709/medium_IMG_1454_73a3c6c52f.jpg 750w,https://res.cloudinary.com/dwl9zbfko/image/upload/v1671534708/large_IMG_1454_73a3c6c52f.jpg 1000w," sizes="100vw"></figure>Let’s talk lake! It was as beautiful as we had hoped it would be, even in the dead of winter when we visited. I’ve heard than in spring, summer, and fall, this lake is covered up by tourists sunbathing, taking boats around the lake, etc. and we were grateful to have the area mostly to ourselves. We ended up hiking up a very very steep but admittedly worth-it hill to the Bled Castle, paid admission, and schlepped further up to take in the gorgeous views of the lake and surrounding area. I’d highly recommend this hike, and if you’re so inclined, you can drive to a parking lot right in front of the castle so you don’t have to do the entire hike as we did.&nbsp;That’s all! Thank you so much for reading yet another blog post about our trip. Please leave us a comment if you’re so inclined - they always make our day!&nbsp;

We loved our time in Budapest and Slovenia - read all about it!

Budapest, Hungary and Ljubljana, Slovenia | Expedition JAWA

Budapest, Hungary and Ljubljana, Slovenia

Hi! We are Jen & AJ - two people traveling Western Europe full-time for 5 months. Check out our blog for recommendations, travel stories, and fun times. 