Budapest Trip

In early March, my girl lab mates and I traveled to Budapest for a girls' weekend! I was very excited because I have wanted to go to Budapest for a while and this seemed like the perfect chance. We caught a flight at around Friday lunch time and came back Sunday evening so we had three days there, which felt short but sufficient to get all of the highlights (also, interestingly, we did not have our passports checked going there nor coming back). We walked A LOT -- our phones told us it was around 45 km so more than a marathon!! We saw some beautiful sights, learned about some of the history by taking a walking tour, ate some great food, went to a bath (Gellert), saw a Hungarian folk band performance, and enjoyed getting to know a new city. It was particularly interesting to see the juxtaposition of old and new, such as the city with a well-preserved 1st underground metro in Europe and a super modern huge American-style shopping mall. Unfortunately, the weather was not very cooperative and it was colder than we had hoped for with some slight drizzle here and there.

Here are some pictures of our adventures (thanks to Elsa for some of the selfie ones):

Overview from a lookout below the Mattias Church (from Buda side on Pest), St. Stephen's Basilica (Pest), Matthias Church (Buda)

Us posing for selfie on Heroes Square (Pest), Parliament (from Buda side on Pest)

Gellert Bath House (Buda), Historic metro station -- not the best picture but it was beautiful and surreal (forgot which station this was but somewhere on the Pest side)

After the baths, we climbed up to Liberty Statue and saw the city at night, which was super cool!