Oh man, this day. Leaving Budapest day.
Well, we started it by eating or throwing out all the leftovers, and we had a semi early start because checkout was at 12:30, and we wanted to walk around Not With Our Backpacks. I don’t remember if I’d mentioned, but based on e-mail we’d been under the impression that we could leave our backpacks there the entire day, sadly not so. Anyway, the door bell rings. I think for some reason the guy must be WAY early… obviously I am not thinking, ‘cause I open the door. And. It’s not him. It was a handy man who needed access to the balcony to take some measurements, ‘cause he was working next door or something. I thought, well we’re eating, we’re there, it’s just some measurements, I guess that’s okay.
So he takes the measurements, then comes back and tries to explain More Things. In Hungarian. I’m just like “This cannot end well.” Well, I just called the person who was supposed to meet us for the key exchange, and had him talk to the handyman. And he said just let him do whatever he needs to do. But… somehow he didn’t convey to the handyman himself that we were leaving, and it was fine to just.. do whatever. So this poor guy, he’s getting frustrated I have no idea what he’s talking about. Eventually he got us to follow him downstairs to talk to the apartment manager, who speaks English. I told him we were leaving, and gave him the guys phone number, the manager said that was fine, he’ll just explain it again with the new people… so we left. It was just very weird, and sounds super short here, but it was quite a bit of time and the poor handyman was all frustrated, and I was getting flustered ‘cause I thought the phone call settled the whole matter.
ANYWAY.
I’m sure it worked out in the end.
We went to the Great Market.
It was pretty great!
On the way we hit the Burda store :D
I think I bought lace here. I’m not 100% sure if it was here. But it was insertion lace, and I’ve yet to use it ;_;
Anyway, the Great Market was like this MASSIVE farmer’s market. It was madness!
And sooooo many peppers!
Honestly I hadn’t realized peppers were such a thing there.
They also had quite a lot of butcher booths.
So.
Much.
Meat.
So Great!
The 2nd story was more like arts/crafts stuff than food.
There was also a downstairs, like a basement, which was fish and game. But we didn’t go because E hates fish, and she couldn’t even stand by the entrance to go down, the smell made her nauseous. And it wasn’t really a big deal to me to see fish 8D
So we got some paprika souvenirs, grapes, and oranges and headed back to the apartment to eat them. Then we finished packing, and were just finishing eating when the guy came. So I rushed through doing the dishes, we handed him the keys, and… that was it. Bye bye apartment.
Laden with our packs we headed to the National Museum, we figured they would likely have a bag check, or lockers, and we could put our backpacks there and enjoy the museum until we had to head out. Well… a train ride and short walk later… the museum is closed on Mondays.
So we went to a cafe we’d passed and E got icecream and I got an “ice coffee.” Which was actually a scoop of icecream in coffee. We looked at our guide books, and one of them sure enough made no mention of the museum being closed Mondays, but the oooother one (which, obviously, we hadn’t been looking at when we made these plans) did. So we looked up other options… all closed on Mondays. Good to know should I find myself in Budapest again.
Well we decided to go back to the Synagogue, which we hadn’t been able to enter before, because it was nearby and is open on Mondays, until 4pm. We get there at 2. It closed early. And there were no signs it was going to do so either, or y’know, we’d have seen that the day before.
We sat on a bench and watched a lot of tourists come up and be disappointed. So sad. But at the front booth though there was a little pamphlet on the Jewish community, so we read that and decided to go to a restaurant recommended in it, because it was pretty close.
We got cups of soup, fried cheese, and raspberry drink.
And then we had to kill just a little more time
So I got dessert.
Then we took the metro to a connecting bus which took us to the airport. Then we stealthily didn’t get our bags weighed (definitely over 10kg), and basically had no problem. I was a little worried about that part.
When we arrived in Italy, there were signs for “EU - nothing to declare” and “Items to declare.” And nothing else. So we ended up just… walking out. And didn’t get our passports stamped ;_; I wanted that Italy stamp!
Well then we got on a bus I’d pre-booked, which took us to the train station, and from there we walked to the hostel. Weirdly I somehow took totally wrong directions and ended up at some other hostel. We were so tired at this point, past midnight, that I almost went to see if they had availability. But the other place was pretty close (plus I’d paid a deposit), so we trekked on.
… and when we got there, they’d tooootally lost our reservation. I mean, they played it off like they had last minute bookings and.. something weird, but it was pretty obvious they’d lost it. Also I’m not blind, I could see my name NOT in his book. Anyway, I had my print out, so after the two owners sort of talked in hushed voices and we just stood there… we were led to our room, which they “upgraded” for us, giving us an en suit instead of a shared bathroom. Well, that’s okay then, we thought.
Omg this room. It was HEAVILY sprayed with some sort of scent, like an air freshener, but rather than covering, it meshed TERRIBLY with this stench from the bathroom. We talked about really going back to that other hostel, or looking up on the internet to see what we could find, but in the end we were just sooo tired we decided to deal. So we opened the window as wide as possible, and tried to crash. It was very poor sleep, the road outside was pretty noisy, and due to the narrow streets very echo-y. It was also really cold from the window. And this was the first hostel I’d been in that when it said “sheets included” literally meant JUST sheets.
But you know, with all the wonderful places we stayed, there had to be someplace to complain about!
Well, we started it by eating or throwing out all the leftovers, and we had a semi early start because checkout was at 12:30, and we wanted to walk around Not With Our Backpacks. I don’t remember if I’d mentioned, but based on e-mail we’d been under the impression that we could leave our backpacks there the entire day, sadly not so. Anyway, the door bell rings. I think for some reason the guy must be WAY early… obviously I am not thinking, ‘cause I open the door. And. It’s not him. It was a handy man who needed access to the balcony to take some measurements, ‘cause he was working next door or something. I thought, well we’re eating, we’re there, it’s just some measurements, I guess that’s okay.
So he takes the measurements, then comes back and tries to explain More Things. In Hungarian. I’m just like “This cannot end well.” Well, I just called the person who was supposed to meet us for the key exchange, and had him talk to the handyman. And he said just let him do whatever he needs to do. But… somehow he didn’t convey to the handyman himself that we were leaving, and it was fine to just.. do whatever. So this poor guy, he’s getting frustrated I have no idea what he’s talking about. Eventually he got us to follow him downstairs to talk to the apartment manager, who speaks English. I told him we were leaving, and gave him the guys phone number, the manager said that was fine, he’ll just explain it again with the new people… so we left. It was just very weird, and sounds super short here, but it was quite a bit of time and the poor handyman was all frustrated, and I was getting flustered ‘cause I thought the phone call settled the whole matter.
ANYWAY.
I’m sure it worked out in the end.
We went to the Great Market.
It was pretty great!
On the way we hit the Burda store :D
I think I bought lace here. I’m not 100% sure if it was here. But it was insertion lace, and I’ve yet to use it ;_;
Anyway, the Great Market was like this MASSIVE farmer’s market. It was madness!
And sooooo many peppers!
Honestly I hadn’t realized peppers were such a thing there.
They also had quite a lot of butcher booths.
So.
Much.
Meat.
So Great!
The 2nd story was more like arts/crafts stuff than food.
There was also a downstairs, like a basement, which was fish and game. But we didn’t go because E hates fish, and she couldn’t even stand by the entrance to go down, the smell made her nauseous. And it wasn’t really a big deal to me to see fish 8D
So we got some paprika souvenirs, grapes, and oranges and headed back to the apartment to eat them. Then we finished packing, and were just finishing eating when the guy came. So I rushed through doing the dishes, we handed him the keys, and… that was it. Bye bye apartment.
Laden with our packs we headed to the National Museum, we figured they would likely have a bag check, or lockers, and we could put our backpacks there and enjoy the museum until we had to head out. Well… a train ride and short walk later… the museum is closed on Mondays.
So we went to a cafe we’d passed and E got icecream and I got an “ice coffee.” Which was actually a scoop of icecream in coffee. We looked at our guide books, and one of them sure enough made no mention of the museum being closed Mondays, but the oooother one (which, obviously, we hadn’t been looking at when we made these plans) did. So we looked up other options… all closed on Mondays. Good to know should I find myself in Budapest again.
Well we decided to go back to the Synagogue, which we hadn’t been able to enter before, because it was nearby and is open on Mondays, until 4pm. We get there at 2. It closed early. And there were no signs it was going to do so either, or y’know, we’d have seen that the day before.
We sat on a bench and watched a lot of tourists come up and be disappointed. So sad. But at the front booth though there was a little pamphlet on the Jewish community, so we read that and decided to go to a restaurant recommended in it, because it was pretty close.
We got cups of soup, fried cheese, and raspberry drink.
And then we had to kill just a little more time
So I got dessert.
Then we took the metro to a connecting bus which took us to the airport. Then we stealthily didn’t get our bags weighed (definitely over 10kg), and basically had no problem. I was a little worried about that part.
When we arrived in Italy, there were signs for “EU - nothing to declare” and “Items to declare.” And nothing else. So we ended up just… walking out. And didn’t get our passports stamped ;_; I wanted that Italy stamp!
Well then we got on a bus I’d pre-booked, which took us to the train station, and from there we walked to the hostel. Weirdly I somehow took totally wrong directions and ended up at some other hostel. We were so tired at this point, past midnight, that I almost went to see if they had availability. But the other place was pretty close (plus I’d paid a deposit), so we trekked on.
… and when we got there, they’d tooootally lost our reservation. I mean, they played it off like they had last minute bookings and.. something weird, but it was pretty obvious they’d lost it. Also I’m not blind, I could see my name NOT in his book. Anyway, I had my print out, so after the two owners sort of talked in hushed voices and we just stood there… we were led to our room, which they “upgraded” for us, giving us an en suit instead of a shared bathroom. Well, that’s okay then, we thought.
Omg this room. It was HEAVILY sprayed with some sort of scent, like an air freshener, but rather than covering, it meshed TERRIBLY with this stench from the bathroom. We talked about really going back to that other hostel, or looking up on the internet to see what we could find, but in the end we were just sooo tired we decided to deal. So we opened the window as wide as possible, and tried to crash. It was very poor sleep, the road outside was pretty noisy, and due to the narrow streets very echo-y. It was also really cold from the window. And this was the first hostel I’d been in that when it said “sheets included” literally meant JUST sheets.
But you know, with all the wonderful places we stayed, there had to be someplace to complain about!
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