4 Countries in 3 Days

So, sadly the travel portion of my abroad experience has come to an end. We went to 4 countries in 3 days, and ended it with a bang. We traveled instead of studying for finals. Is that not what studying abroad is all about? Oh. Dang.

Okay, Scotland counts as one. So does the Brussels Airport…Let me start over. I went to Roma and Budapest from Saturday to Wednesday and had an absolute BLAST. It was my final trip abroad, but I ended on the perfect note. One last hurrah before finals was exactly what I needed to get through the next 9 days.

Here’s a quick rundown of what we did in these two fantastic cities:

(‘Quick’ because I have to edit/rewrite an entire short story today and start studying for my other two test finals. YAY.)

Saturday:

4 friends (Mallika, Riley, Dorothy, and Abby) and I woke up at 4am for our flight to Rome. Upon landing, we almost missed our super quick and cheap bus into the city from Ciampino via SIT shuttle, but we made it by mere seconds. After dropping off our belongings at Alessandro Palace (which is not a palace, but a hostel with dirty showers), we immediately headed to the Colosseum, forgetting the fact that we hadn’t eaten since about 6:30am and it was now 2pm.

We stopped at the Santa Marie Maggiore on our way to the colosseum. It was super cool! Still not totally sure what it is, since we didn’t go inside…but we’ll assume it’s a church?

We got to the Colosseum (Which is where we learned that it’s spelled “Colosseo” in Italian, and that the Italians do, in fact, pronounce “M”s in words where they exist.)

For those of you who may not know, I studied Latin in high school before becoming completely fluent in French in college (JOKES for the fluency. I can’t even master English.) Seeing the Colosseum was a huge thing for me.  The structure was so impressive.

 

I would’ve loved to go visit Pompeii while on this trip, but we didn’t have time to make it all the way out there. So, my little Latin cultural knowledge nerdy-ness was completely  brought out at the Colosseum.

All of the structures in Rome are completely mystifying, but this one was especially amazing to me.

 

After visiting the Colosseum, we went to go check out the Forum/Palatino, but those areas were already closed off for the day. It was a huge bummer, and we accidentally walked up a GIANT hill, thinking it would lead to the entrance (Two different hills, two different times), but alas, we missed it. We got some cool pictures though.

With our stomachs growling, we made it up to see Capitoline Hill. Look at that rainbow above.

This location (Capitoline Hill) was where I had my first negative encounter with a bird in Rome. I was taking a panoramic photograph on my phone, and all of the sudden a giant seagull/satanic animal swooped in and landed about an inch from my face. I don’t even remember getting out of the way, but when I came to, my face was inches from the bird-poop infested ground. It was great. I love birds.

After the bird scare, I was feeling particularly adventurous and had Riley take this fun n flirty pic of me by some stairs. (Not pictured: The stairs or the location, really.)

Then, we walked by this–Trajans Columns, I believe.

Still with grumbling stomachs, we mustered up the energy to go back and visit the Altare della Patria and take some pictures.

The sunset went on for DAYS and it was glorious. I also was almost attacked by a bird here, and there was photographic evidence (Before I deleted it…Sorry. Would’ve been funny to see.)

This is the view from the Altare della Patria, and it’s beautiful. Roma, bring me back to you.

Praise Mallika for having the guts to ask people to take pictures of us. Boo on Dorothy for having her eyes closed.

We finally got some dinner somewhere in the Travestere area. (Actually, after visiting the Altare della Patria, we went and got some gelato at a place that wouldn’t let us eat it inside because we ordered it the way they asked us to–at the counter. But we were so starving, that I actually didn’t get a picture of it…)

Mallika, being the avid profiler she is, guessed the language of our server and brought out her “middle school knowledge” of a the language, which she claims is only 3 sentences, and correctly guessed his home language. She scored us a free tiramisu–one of many free things Mallika’s charm and random knowledge of languages supplied. I also found out that I don’t like tiramisu. But it was interesting!

Sunday:

We woke up early the next day and got ready in the dark (Because our hostel room fit 6 people, and we were only 5, we had a random male roommate who slept all day and woke up at odd hours of the night to go out.) We went straight to the Vatican (After eating a hearty breakfast of tiny Italian protein bars.)

There was actually a service going on in the Vatican while we were there, and we kept getting locked in to random areas because the clergy (or whatever it’s called) would be leaving or entering and we couldn’t be in the way while they were doing so.

St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City was BEAUTIFUL. We made it around every small corner of this place that we were allowed. I’ve posted just the most breathtaking pictures (And photography was banned in certain places we ventured.)

This was the view from the Basilica. It was gorgeous!

Bless up Riley for this pic.

Almost got attacked by birds several times on the walk over to this fountain within Vatican City. But we are smiling through it all.

After Vatican City, we went to the Castel Sant’Angelo because it was also free on Sundays. It had wonderful views and was also super cool. It was the tallest building in Rome for a long time!! We got to see the top of it and had so much fun.

This is me at the top of the Castel Sant’Angelo right as Riley said, “You have a friend” while giggling satanically because she knew how afraid I was of birds this weekend. Literally they just kept getting SO CLOSE.

We then ventured over to the Trevi Fountain and obviously threw coins into the water. It had actually been forever since I’d done so, and I completely forgot to make a wish the first time because I was trying to get perfect form…so I had to do it again and actually make a real wish.

I’m just posting this because it’s the most awkward picture ever. Enjoy.

So many tourists, but BEAUTIFUL.

I ate this whole pizza. We also had red wine because…when in Rome, do as the Romans do!

This is Hadrian’s Temple (Or the columns at it.)

The Pantheon was beautiful. Abby and Dorothy filled us in on how every dome in history is basically based on this one. It’s crazy! Yay Rome!

We got more gelato, and they even put whipped cream on top FOR FREE.

We made it to the Spanish Steps where we chilled like Lizzy McGuire for 20 minutes.

We got dinner around Piazza Navona (Shout out to Katie Asher for all of the suggestions for this night. I ended up messing up the title of one of the restaurants she’d suggested for dinner (She suggested Da Baffetos, and I accidentally led us to Baffetos 2. Then we tried to get to her other suggestion, Old Bear, and we got lost. We ended up eating somewhere random after journeying around Piazza Navona being heckled by waiters to come in, but it worked out well. And we really appreciated her suggestions!! We went to her gelato suggestion and it was to die for. We are all very jealous Katie gets to study here. One guy even tried to lure us into a dark alley behind several restaurants, saying we would get a special student discount…to which I asked him the obvious, “Are you trying to kidnap us?” He wasn’t, so he claimed. But we walked away in fear anyway.)

We didn’t eat here. Mallika just wanted a picture in front of this thing. We do not know the man on the right.

After two full days in Rome, we were pretty exhausted. We went home and awaited our 5am wakeup call to board the busses to the airport. Dorothy and Mallika were leaving for Barcelona, and Abby, Riley, and I were off to Budapest!

Monday:

As I said, we woke up at 5am. We made it to Budapest around 11 and met up with MK, who had been in Barcelona. We headed to Pal’s Hostel (which I 100% recommend to ANYONE going to Budapest. S/o to Sarah Robertson suggesting we stay there. It was amazing.)

By the time we were situated in our hostel and were ready to walk around, it was around 2:30pm. We were starving, and went to a traditional Hungarian restaurant. Based on this meal alone, I came to the conclusion that Hungarians just try to pack in as many calories as possible into meals to combat the cold weather. Literally none of this food goes together. It was so random. Yet, so good.

After stuffing our faces with Hungarian food, (and trying to figure out the currency–Hungary widely accepts HUF and the euro, which was super confusing, because labels would say 5500 or 10 and it was confusing to be switching between the two constantly. I still don’t know how the HUF works…or even if it’s called that) we went to the Chain Bridge. It’s right on the Danube and separates Buda from Pest.

We then walked up to Buda Castle, where we just randomly kept taking strange turns up the side of this structure. We kept thinking we’d approached a dead end, but suddenly a small walkway would appear. At one point, we even came across a copper room, that looked like a completely dead end, or at least somewhere we shouldn’t enter. But we walked in anyway, and there was an ELEVATOR that took us to the top of the castle. It was so confusing, but this is basically an extended metaphor for our time in Budapest: No one says no, and we kept randomly encountering the best things possible. Even leaving the castle, we walked down a dimly lit set of stairs, where we thought we’d meet a psychopath killer, but then we were randomly at the bottom and somehow had made it down in 2 minutes instead of 20.

View from the Buda Castle. Wes Anderson claims “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is a completely fictionalized area of Europe, but it literally IS based on Budapest. The random nonsensical pathways that lead you to great things, and even the funicular are completely based on Buda Castle (which we didn’t take, hence the random sidewalks leading us nowhere and somewhere all at once.)

On our journey leaving the castle and heading back to the Chain Bridge, we saw a man playing music with basically a saw and a piece of floss. He looked like someone I would never mess with. It was scary, but other than that, Budapest was very safe.

We walked back to the Pest side of Budapest and saw Parliament at night. It was beautiful.

After getting lost coming back from Parliament (and walking onto a movie set, where no one told us we couldn’t be, but we finally decided to get out of the way), we made it to the Christmas Markets (which were right next to our hostel.) We looked around and even saw a light show (Projected on the building straight ahead.)

We went to dinner at Platz, which had terrible reviews on Google, but was #1 in our hearts. It was super modern–we decided we could forgo the Hungarian food after our first meal of random carbs. This was still cultural though…kind of.

I was so dehydrated that I literally ordered a salad for this first time in years. It was great.

After this, we went to bed because we are crazy party girls, clearly. The ruin bars would be for the next night!

Tuesday:

I woke up this morning with my shoes full of bags of gummy bears from St. Nicholas because December 6th is St. Nicholas’ day, and kids around Hungary wake up with their shoes full of presents–something we’d learned the night before. My friends are so cute, and it was a lovely birthday present!! I’m grateful for these ladies–and they know me so well (I can’t find a normal sized package of plain gummy bears in Scotland, so this is the best thing EVER. Currently eating gummy bears as I write this.)

After the wonderful surprise of gummy bears, we ventured out into the cold tundra of Budapest. Our first stop was Starbucks, to fuel up for the big day. Then, we walked to the House of Terror. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but it’s a whole museum telling the horrifying stories of the Communist and Fascist influence on Hungary and the struggles of the country. It was extremely spooky. The House of Terror is definitely worth visiting, if you ever go to Budapest. They ended up giving us about 40 pages to read. We got 1-2 pages per every room we went into, as translation for what the room signified and what was going on at the time. It was a huge history lesson, and we all learned so much. I will admit, the extensive stack of papers we had at the end of the museum was quite comical, but it was all worth it. And now we have SO much information on the terrifying struggle of Budapest and Hungary around the time of WWII.

Next up, we went to the baths. We went to the Széchenyi Thermal Baths, and realized we forgot shower shoes to walk around the outdoor baths. It made walking between baths super hard, as it was absolutely freezing outside (We were almost crouched over in pain by the time you made it to the next bath, if you went between the two outside, which we did.) We also didn’t realize we’d have to change in front of the monitors of the lady’s locker room, but that was okay since we had old women by our sides who were completely unfazed by being watched while changing. It was the first time we had been told “No” in Budapest–I actually managed to change in the bathroom since I went first, but Riley got yelled at while she was waiting outside of the bathroom. Hah. I wasn’t told no. But I was stared down by the monitors for a while when I came back to our lockers already in a bathing suit.

Me and Abby in the baths. Peep: The legs of some random pruned man on the right.

After the baths, we walked around to find lunch and decided to go to an Indian food restaurant. It was delicious, but SO spicy. Riley and I ordered our chicken tikka masala medium spicy, and we were both in tears eating our food. It was so great, but my mouth still cowers in fear at the memory of the spiciness of this food.

We passed Heroes’ Square on our way back from lunch, and also saw the new metro station! There were actually people checking the tickets of those going on to the new metro station at that particular stop, and we were only trying to get a look at the new metro (Since we could walk home anyway), but the men checking tickets were sketched out by us and probably thought we were trying to sneak on when we only wanted to get a good look at the 2014 built Metro 4 line!

We freshened up in the hostel, and went to the Christmas Markets before dinner to try a chimney. It’s basically like a breaded pastry that they catch on fire and load up with your choice of flavoring–we chose cinnamon. It was great.

We went to KonyvBar for dinner. They “cook” books each week, and it’s a very literary-centric restaurant. It was super cool and we geeked out.

This week was “A Christmas Carol.” They basically devise a menu based on a book. It’s so cool!

We got a bottle of chardonnay for the table and soon were stuffing ourselves with “Presents from the Chef” (AKA the bread and seasoned butter above, and the soup below.)

After stuffing ourselves full AGAIN at dinner, we headed out to Szimpla Kert–A ruin bar in Budapest.

Once the clock struck 11, I was convinced we had to run home. Since it was my 21st, my friends obliged. I don’t know why I thought we needed to head out (Probably because this is the latest I’d been out while traveling), but we were home and in bed around midnight, after MK mysteriously led us home with her phone that I didn’t see she had in her hand.

Wednesday:

Sadly, the last day of our trip was finally here. But, we didn’t let that stop us from having a fun day.

We started out the day later than usual (We woke up at 8am) and checked out of the hostel and headed to see Parliament during the day.

Riley taught us how to be in more than one place at once. MUST BE THE WORK OF…FAIRY GOD PARENTS. We spent about 20 minutes all taking pictures like this–running around behind the camera and popping up again. Highly recommend trying this. Sad that we discovered the magic that is the iPhone panoramic on our last trip, but I’ll be doing this almost everywhere I go now.

We then went to Castle Hill, where we had to climb a ton of random stairs that we were completely unsure of where they led. Luckily, they didn’t lead to dead ends like they had in Rome, and we ended up where we were trying to go.

The view from Fisherman’s Bastion.

We then made it to the Shoes on the Danube, which is a holocaust memorial along the Danube. People have filled these shoes with possessions of those lost, and presents for those missed. It was a beautiful memorial site.

Our last stop in Budapest was Jack’s Burger, which we’re pretty sure was an American Western themed restaurant. I got pizza–it was nothing compared to Rome, but it was still fine.

We then went to Brussels. If you don’t know, I now have 4 stamps in my passport from Brussels and I have never set foot in Brussels. I’ve only been to the Eurostar station and the airport in Brussels. It was sad, because we didn’t get a stamp in our passports for Hungary, and we ended up with Brussels instead (because of our layover.) Everything was closed at 8pm, and we were stuck with disgusting meals of too much pasta that cost way more than I’m comfortable posting. I was disappointed with this airport endlessly, but Brussels Airlines was a treat and we were blessed we got to fly on that (non-budget) airline for our final trip abroad.

Now, I’m back in Edinburgh. We got back home around 11pm last night (I’m writing this on Thursday), and Prarthana (one of my flatmates) left this morning at 5am. Of course, we made her wake us up and we helped her get her suitcases downstairs and say farewell. I miss her so much already. But the blog on my flatmates will come next week.

Now, it’s crunch time and I have to write a short story and then study for my Islamic History final that’s next Wednesday and my Celtic Civilisation final that’s next Friday. I’m terrified. So little time to study for exams that count for over half of my final grade. Help.

Wish me luck on finals! I’m going to die. Alright, bye!