Travel Bug's Christmas Chronicles, Pt. II

I have been back in Padova for three days now, and figure it is about time I finished up with my Christmas vacation, although after New Year's, can it really be that interesting?

December 29, 2005:

Arrived in Budapest and settled in at the hostel. Met some of the people staying there. Went out for a walk around 7 (sans map because I am stubborn like that) to get something to eat, but ended up at a grocery store and around some other streets just exploring. When I got back to the hostel, one of the girls (Becca) was going out for dinner, so I joined her since I hadn't actually succeeded in obtaining dinner, which was the goal of my previous outing.

After dinner, we came back to the hostel and hung out with the others in the common room.

December 30, 2005:

What to do? Got a late start on the day owing to the fact that I really had no agenda of 'Things to Do and See" while in Budapest. All I really wanted to do was go to the baths, but was saving that for another time. Spent a bit of time cross-referencing with maps and city guides since the rough guide map listed things in English, and the more detalied city map and guide listed things in Hungarian. It took a while to figure out what was what, but I managed.

Ended up going out for a walk around in the snow for a few hours to get my bearings in the daylight. Then I stopped by the market near my hostel to do some souveneir shopping since I definitely wanted to get gifts for my family in Hungary and thought it best not to put it off.

I returned to the hostel to dump off my stuff, and toyed with the idea of going to the store to buy food to make for dinner. One of the Aussie guys (Paul) thought that sounded like a good idea, so we went to the store together, came back to the hostel, and made dinner.

Then I went to bed, as did Paul and Becca (we were in a mixed dorm of 8 people).

December 31, 2005:

Time for a mud bath. I got up early today to get in a full day of sightseeing. The first thing on my agenda was to go to the baths and get a mud bath, since my rough guide said that I could do that, and I have always wanted to. I decided to go to the Gellert baths right across the bridge so that I could come home to shower and change after my roll in the dirt.

Well, when I got there, I was informed that mud baths are available by perscription only! How crappy is that. But I went into the baths anyways. It was nice, but I was a little put off by the lack of mud, so I didn't enjoy myself as much as I could have.

Once I left the baths, I wandered around the city some more on the Pest side, and stopped for food (and wine!) for New Year's day since all the stores were going to be closed. And then I went back to the hostel.

I had planned to meet with Becca and some other people from the hostel around 8, so once I got back around 5 I got ready to go out later that night.

And you all know the rest of that story......

January 1, 2006:

Rough morning. I woke up on the couch, even though I remember falling asleep in my bed, and I wasn't feeling so hot. Michael (another guy from the hostel who Becca, Paul, and I went out with on New Year's) gave me some AlkaSeltzer Plus Tylenol to make me feel better, but it only succeeded in making me ill. At that point I went back to bed to get more sleep, and woke up around noon.

The boys were there when I got up (Becca had to leave to catch her flight back to London that afternoon), so I got ready and we headed off to the Gellert baths to wallow away our overindulgences from the night before.

After we had become sufficiently pruny, we left the baths and went to drop our stuff off at the hostel and get a bite to eat. Another guy from the hostel, (Ryan), decided to join us for dinner so we headed back out into the rain to get some grub. I stepped out of the front door onto the street and turned around to wait for the others. Good thing I turned around because a car drove buy at that moment and I got splashed by a HUGE tidal wave that soaked the back of my coat and pants. At least I had my long coat on!

After dinner, the boys went and got more wine (I opted out) and we went back to the hostel to chill out and watch a movie in the common room.

January 2, 2006:

Wine tour! Today Micheal, Paul, and I woke up early and caught a bus to Egar, about an hour and a half outside of Budapest. Egar is one of the wine valleys in Hungary. We spent the day going from wine cellar to wine cellar tasting wine glasses of wine for 80 Forint (about .45 Canadian). I bought a bottle of wine for Gordon (my step-dad), and the boys ended up going back to the hostel with about 14 litres of wine between the two of them. And since we had an hour to wait for the bus back to Budapest plus an hour and a half bus ride....let's say they got started in it quite early.

We got back to the hostel and most of the people were there already watching a movie, so we joined them. A little later, Lance and Sousana (two Goth people from Scotland) and two others got back from caving and joined in.

We all stayed up until about 4am that night. It was a great time. We had a mini-goth party where all of us (including Paul and Mike), got all dolled up with black nail polish, crazy eye-liner, black clothes, some chain necklaces, etc. Someone brought out their laptop and got the Nine Inch Nails going. It was tons of fun!

January 3, 2006:

Last day in Budapest. I got up early today to check out some of the sights on the Buda side since I had not yet done so. I climbed up to the top of the Citadelle and along the Danube past the Chain Bridge before it was time to jump on the Metro and head back to the hostel.

I had decided to join Michael and Paul on their way to Rome (except that Paul changed his plans so I just ended up heading there with Michael), so once I got back to the hostel, I packed up my stuff and headed out to the airport.

Got to Rome with no problem, checked into the hostel, and headed out to dinner in front of the Pantheon and then a walk around the city to Piazza del Popolo and the Trevi Fountain before heading home to bed.

January 4, 2006:

Woke up around 10 and got ready for a day of walking around. We pretty much saw most of Rome, from San Pietro to the Colosseum, and everything in between. It was a pretty tiring day so we got pizza and headed back to the hostel to eat. We met some New Zealand girls who were staying in our room and we stayed up and chatted with them for a while before I got too tired and called it a night.

January 5, 2006:

I slept in while Michael went out sightseeing. We met around 1:30 at the Pantheon for lunch and then headed to the Cappucin Church to see the BONE CRYPT! Talk about creepy!!! There were all these sculptures made out of heaps of shoulder blades, skulls, hip bones, jaws, etc. On the walls there were flower patterns made out of separated vertebrae!!! It was definitely like nothing I had ever seen or imagined before.

Then we headed back to the hostel so Mike could pack before meeting up with the New Zealand girls for dinner and drinks. After that we headed to another bar (Trinity College Bar of all places) to meet up with more people we had met in the hostel.

This girl Mary and I decided we wanted to dance even though no one was really dancing. We said "Stuff it" and started dancing, and before you know it, so was about half of the bar! It was pretty cool. But Italian guys are pretty grabby and don't really respect the North American idea of "space," so we grew a little tired of that before too long.

Michael and the NZ girls headed back to the hostel and the rest of us just stayed chatting for a while longer before deciding to go home to bed.

January 6, 2006:

Back to Padova. Woke up this morning. Mike had already left at some time for his flight to the States, and the New Zealand girls had left to check into another hostel. Mary and I got up and got ready to go to the train station as we were both taking trains to Venice (but not the same train. I took InterCity and she took EuroStar) that left at around the same time.

After 5 hours, I returned to Padova with all my luggage in tow. I met a really nice girl on the train who helped me with my luggage and offered to have her boyfriend drive me home since they didn't live far from me. I thought that was really nice of them.

Got home to my apartment, unpacked, and started doing LAUNDRY!!! It had been two weeks for some of my clothes! I caught up with Gigi as to what had been going on while I was away, and then I went to bed for some much needed, uninturrupted, non-bedroom sharing, no snoring sleep!

And that was my Christmas vacation! I had an awesome time!!! I am already planning where to go for my 6 days off at Easter.