Visiting Budapest

Staring at the computer, me and Kunal were determined to book a holiday, however we only could do a few days and wanted somewhere exciting with a short distance from England. We eventually concluded that it was between Budapest, Berlin or Amsterdam. I had been Amsterdam before and had an amazing time, however I always prefer to go somewhere new as it’s always more exciting. I went to Berlin when I was 15, therefore my memory is a bit blurred, therefore it could still feel exciting, especially as now I’m old enough to drink (well, for quite a while now). Then there was Budapest; I had heard amazing stories about the city, while the prices were meant to be absolutely nothing. Eventually we decided on Budapest as we can have the same amount of fun but at a much lower cost.

We set off on the Thursday, jumping on a plane with someone dressed in a pig onesie a couple of seats in front (that’s a good sign if I’ve ever seen one).We had heard the weather was meant to be dreadful, however we found it to be really warm, albeit there were some seriously crazy floods, however that just adds to the excitement.

On the first day, we dropped our bags off and headed towards town. I was determined not to drink on the first night as I wanted to spend the next day seeing sights, however it is quite difficult to control the excitement when you arrive in a new destination. We explored for about 5 hours, checking out the architecture and the amazing buildings.

I was clear from walking around that if I had more time I could have easily done a lot more, with the hills close to the baths looking like great fun to climb.

The weather was amazing, however there were some quite humerous views alongside the river due to the effects of the flood, which had sunk a number of areas which you could normally walk through.

After a while, I needed the toilet so we headed into a bar, which had a 50’s American bar feel to it. We heard lots of noise from downstairs so we headed down to check out what all the commotion was. Once we got down there we found about 20 people drinking heavily, speaking in English and playing beer pong. We instantly joined in and made friends with all of them. We found out they were all part of a pub crawl, so after some heavy drinking, we promised ourselves we would join for the next night, however we headed home so we wouldn’t be too hungover the next day.

On the way home, a few Hungarians heard our accents and came over and started chatting to us in English. After a few good jokes, we decided to join them in heading to a bar and somehow found ourselves doing triple vodka’s straight. Understandably, it started to blur a bit after this point, however the club they wanted to go to happened to be the club underneath our hostel…result!

After that embarrassing dancing, tequila shots and random friend making we ended up heading upstairs to pass out. I woke up fully clothed, shoes still, much to the amusement of the two girls who were in the room. We then started chatting to them and told them we would be heading out that night on the pub crawl, which they agreed to join us on. Firstly however we had to go to the baths for an ultimate hangover cure.

The baths were about an hour walk from our hostel, which was fine as we stopped off everywhere along the way for coffee’s. I don’t know what it is, but I always feel like I’m not on holiday in Europe until I’ve had a coffee in a cafe, sitting outside in the glorious sun.

The bath’s looked just as amazing as I thought they would, well worth the £15 charge. The most beautiful bath was inside with a roman appearance, however the water in this natural bath was freezing. We instead switched between the jacuzzi’s and the outside pool which had artificial waves added.

Once we got back to the hostel, we met back up with the two girls from the hostel, Amanda and Tiffany, as we headed back out for the bar crawl. Once we got there we settled down in some seats as we awaited for the others to arrive. Gradually more and more people joined, such as the legendary Andrew from New Zealand and a good few from England and America. The one stand out person however was ‘the Swiss guy’, hands-down the most oddest fella I’ve ever met, who seemed to have an addiction to Nazi’s!

This was another night which slightly blurred out, however I can say all the bars were amazing, with one of them featuring a live band playing heavy metal. I’m not a big heavy metal fan, however when on holiday I couldn’t care what music it is, I just want to dance and get hyper.

On the final day we headed out to a beer festival to meet a friend of Amanda and Tiffany, called Dave. He just so happened to be an absolute legend, unfortunately he was heading off after the beer festival so he couldn’t join us for the final night out. We also managed to taste hands down one of the most tastiest drinks I’ve had in my life, a cherry flavoured beer. I could definitely sip on that all day, not sure if that would make me an alcohol though…hmmmm.

 There were also a couple of other people in the group who knew Dave, one being a quality Canadian hippy called John. Now, it might partly be the alcohol and partly be the yes mission, but I have known myself to randomly agree to everything, this was one of those occasions. I agreed with John to get a nipple piercing before I flew back to England.

Following the final night out, once again on the bar crawl, we headed around town, still a bit drunk and looking for a piercing parlour. Eventually we found a store in the mall who offered piercings. Amanda got her nose pierced, Tiffany got her tongue pierced and I got my nipple pierced, legendary!

I’m not going to lie, it did hurt a bit, however the pain only lasted two seconds and then its all over, so well worth it.

The one thing I didn’t consider was how awkward it would be to carry a bag all the way back to England with a nipple piercing, definitely uncomfortable and I really couldn’t wait to get home and dip my nipple in a shotglass of salty water (not something you say everyday).

Below is Amanda’s nose piercing:

and below is Tiffany’s tongue piercing: