Spring Break: Budapest & Athens

I am terrible at blogging and haven't done so in forever, but it's because I've been keeping myself busy with lots of traveling and activities, and I'd rather be having fun than sitting in my room on my computer...which I am doing now, but the point is I try not to do it a lot. I've traveled sooo much since my last blog post and done so many different things, so I'm just going to post a quick succession of blog posts in order to catch up.

For spring break, my unitmate Cassy and I went to Budapest and Athens, and they were incredible! I loved both cities so much.

Budapest
This was the first time I had traveled to an Eastern European country, and I loved it! We couchsurfed at this lady's house, and she was the kindest host ever. She had three little boys and also lived with her mom, but she made her kids double up in their beds so that we could each have our own bed. Their place was just outside of the city center and took about 30 minutes to walk there, but it was still still so nice and we really enjoyed staying there. She and her mom picked us up the first day from the train station and took us on a car ride of the city, showing us all the biggest attractions so that we could figure out what we'd want to see the next few days. She brought us to the top of a big hill so that we could see the night view of the beautiful city below. People say that Budapest is the "Paris" of Eastern Europe, and I totally agree. With the Danube River running under its many bridges and with its beautiful, old buildings all lining the sides of the water, I could really see the resemblance between the two cities.

Cassy and I have traveled quite a few times together already, and whenever we do, we realize we like to mostly walk around the city instead of taking public transportation because you not only get to your destination but get to see so much more of the city along the way...and for free! So for the next few days (I think we spent about three days there total), we spent a lot of time just walking around and figuring out the layout of the city. The part on one side of the water is called Buda and the other is Pest. Buda is richer and has the main castle and big hill that tourists like to go to in order to get good pictures of the view, and Pest has pretty much everything else.

Streets of Buda

Market

Highlights of our trip were:

• having a buffet dinner for around 6 euros per person (most things in Budapest are super cheap!)
• taking a walk at night along the Danube River and seeing the beautiful Parliament Building lit up
• playing with our host's little dog (his name was Zseby, or something like that...it means "pocket" in Hungarian because he was very little)
• going to a thermal bath...it's basically like a natural heated swimming pool!



Parliament Building by night 

• exploring the area around Matthias Church on the Buda side
• going inside St. Stephen's Basilica on the Pest side and being completely overwhelmed by how grand and beautiful it is
• deciding to go out for drinks one night but then both ending up being asleep in our beds by 9pm
• walking into a random nice building because everyone else was doing it and walking out 20 minutes later still having no idea what it was
• accidentally being there on a national holiday and seeing Hungarian flags EVERYWHERE...so patriotic!
• finally being able to walk around outside in just a t-shirt again!

Matthias Church area 

Matthias Church 

Interior of St. Stephen's Basilica

View from the top of Gellert Hill

Brussels

After our wonderful trip in Budapest, we returned to Brussels for a day because it was cheaper to have all our flights go out of Brussels rather than flying directly from Budapest to Athens. We spent the night at Cassy's house, and it was a lot of fun because her whole family was there! I had spent a weekend at her house before and also hung out with her and her siblings together in Utrecht, so it was really nice to see her family again. Cassy's birthday is March 12 and mine is March 20 (I think we were at her house on the 17th), so her mom was so sweet and made a delicious dessert to celebrate both our birthdays! For dinner, we had raclette, which is kind of like fondue but actually really not. You eat pieces of melted, soft cheese with other things like potatoes and meat. It's really yummy and it was really fun!

Athens

We left the next day for Athens! Athens was such an awesome city. I was completely in awe of all the ruins just scattered throughout the city. I can't believe people live there and on their way to work or school they'll just see some ruins that existed there for thousands and thousands of years. Apparently things can get tricky when building new buildings there because they always find random ruins that they are obligated to somehow preserve while constructing their new building. As a result, you'll find a lot of banks and metro stations with glass floors that you can walk over while looking down at old ruins. I love visiting museums, so we had fun at the National Archeological Museum, as well as the New Acropolis Museum, both of which we got in free with our EU student cards. And the Acropolis was amazing. The Parthenon was partly covered with construction stuff, but it's still so cool to see!!!

We also met up with other UCU friends (one of them is another American exchange student who is also here for the whole year...there's only like three of us who stayed for the whole year) who happened to be in Athens for spring break, and it was so fun! We had dinner together and then went on a pub crawl, and we really enjoyed ourselves talking and playing games in each bar. We were very loud and probably reinforced the stereotype that Americans are loud and annoying, but I'm glad we gained a very memorable experience of Athens. It was colder than Budapest at that time of the year, but still warm-ish, so it was nice to get away from the Seattle-like Dutch weather for a little bit.

Meeting up with UCU friends!

View of Athens from Lycabettus Hill

Highlights of our trip were:

• eating about 7 gyros each total in the span of 4 days
• visiting all the ruins -- the Ancient Agora, the Roman Agora, Hadrian's Library, Mars Hill, and so much more!
• climbing Lycabettus Hill at sunset and somehow climbing it in 10 minutes when it should actually take 30 (we couldn't find the actual path and were like basically climbing through a forest to find it; we went past a fence and through many nettles and bushes and somehow miraculously came out very near to the top) -- having a view of the sun setting over the entire city was absolutely beautiful
• seeing the supposed prison of Socrates on Filopappos Hill and also just chilling on the hill in the sun for a while, enjoying the view of Athens
• the weather being warm enough to eat ice cream
• meeting my brother Sam's friend Doros and hanging out with him several times -- he is one of the nicest and most generous people ever
• eating so much delicious Greek food

The Parthenon 

Our first of many, many gyros

Aegina

My birthday happened to be while we were in Greece, so we celebrated it in Aegina, a small island about 45 minutes away (by ferry) from the port in Athens. Because it was off-season, it was pretty quiet on the island, but it was still wonderful to be there. We rented an ATV, and I'm pretty sure we woke the entire island up every time we rode it. It was awesome though and so fun to get around the island that way! It was beautiful to see the view of the ocean and the mainland every time we rode around on it. We visited some more ruins there and just rode through the countryside on the island, having a really relaxing and nice day. The place we stayed was in Perdika, a little fishing village at the south of the island...it was beautiful! But because it was a bit quiet in the off-season, we rode up to the main area around the port to have dinner. We spent a chilly night in the nice little hotel we stayed in and then left the next day back to Athens. All in all, it was a wonderful birthday, and I'm so glad I got to spend it on the island with Cassy! :)

View from Aegina

The island of Aegina

Our ride 

Port of Aegina