From Budapest to Vienna

Beautiful Budapest

Just an update to say that having spent four glorious days in Budapest, we are now on our way to Vienna.We have really enjoyed doing a few walking tours around the city including: a General Tour, the Communism Tour and the Jewish Quarter walking tour. We have also visited the traditional Hungarian baths, seen the House of Terror and the Heroes' Square.


Quite naiveley, I had always pictured Budapest to be a somewhat under-developed city. I thought that it might not be too safe and imagined it to be more like Albania than London. In fact it is really developed with Louis Vuitton shops next to Nespresso shops next to Costa Coffee. I felt safe at all times here and found it to be really clean also. It was a very pleasant surprise and a really lovely city to visit. The views from the Buda hills over the Danube to the Pest side are glorious, and the architecture is also spectacular.

Of course we have eaten the inherently Hungarian Goulash (pronounced Goulyash) soup. We had the beef one, which came with little dumplings. It was an interesting experience to try it and, although I am glad that I did, it is definitely not a Summer food. It was really heavy and hearty and I came away from the meal feeling a bit ill... just wayyyy too much meat. Still, in icy cold blizzardy Winter I can imagine it would be the perfect dish.

Szimpla Ruin Bar

We were introduced to the world of Ruin Bars - a bar that has been established in what used to be dilapidated old houses with run-down furniture and interiors. They have now been refurbished and all of the small rooms that remain make drinking in them a really unique experience. Each room is furnished differently - some with quirky features such as wallpaper made out of sheet music. Other ruin bars, like Szimpla, which we visited, sold shisha and cheap beers. I really liked Szimpla because it had walls covered in books that were available to read (despite the fact that they were in Hungarian and resembled the Bible), they added to that homely feel. Another unique touch to Szimpla were the waitresses that came around with bowls of carrots - yes, carrots- in the event that you wanted a snack. How very nutritious.

With only 11 more days left of our backpacking adventure we are now off on a 2.5 hour bus ride to find some Wiener Schnitzel and Apple Strudel in Vienna, and hoping to see a classical music concert also!

Postcard from Ios

We are now more than half way through our trip, having visited four countries thus far. Right now we are in Bol, an island off Split in Croatia. It is absolutely breathtakingly beautiful ere. In order to do justice to our experiences I shall start at the beginning and tell you about our first port of call: the lovely island of Ios in Greece.

After our first night spent "sleeping" in Athens Airport - only to be woken by a very scary Greek woman yelling for us to get off her chairs- we caught a 4:30am bus to Piraeus Port and then a ferry to Ios. We were really lucky with the hostel we had booked- it had a spectacular pool area and we had a nice room with lots of air-con and an en-suite. We spent our first day visiting the Myloportas beach which was really pretty. For dinner a standout meal of the trip so far was devoured. It was a stuffed eggplant with cheese, zucchini and all sorts of yummy veggies. So good! I should mention that our dinner was also enjoyed by a tiny cat that wouldn't leave our table. He meowed persistently until we gave in and treated him to some bread (and tatziki).

The next day I woke up early and went for a run to explore the area a bit more. I found a gorgeous white church and further on a secluded beach. When I returned from my run we ate at was to become our signature breaky over the we trip: greek yoghurt with honey and banana. It's odd just how much better the honey and Greek yoghurt tastes in its homeland, but trust me, its amazing. After breaky we took a boat to a beautiful island which is called Manganari. The boat-trip was made all the more amusing by a group of girls that felt it would be a good idea to do a photo shoot of themselves as we were traveling. They pouted and swished their hair as everyone looked on quite bewildered.

When we arrived at the beach I was blown away by the turquoise water and the masses of beach umbrellas which were in hot demand (pardon the pun). We made a new friend who asked if he could share our umbrella. Not feeling like we could turn the pale young Canadian boy away from the shade, he proceeded to lie with us for the rest of the day. At 5pm when the boat cane to collect us and take us home we all jumped back on the boat only to be pleasantly surprised by a stop off for a touch of 'jumping off the side of the two story boat into deep crystal clear water'-ing. It was truly magical and I had an amazing time facing a few fears and finally jumping in with a splash. And when it was time to go the boat honked it's horn three times and everyone frantically paddled back to the boat, fearful of being left behind.

In the evening we had a gyros dinner (a Greek kebab) and then played cards while drinking €3 glasses of sangria until around midnight. We then realized we would have to hurry and luckily caught the last bus into town were we were to see what the nightlife of Ios had to offer. Too much it turned out for one night of partying. We hopped of the bus at the stop where everyone else got off and then looked around unsure of our next step. Where exactly would we find a place to drink? Everyone was drinking outside in a courtyard area so we - like lemmings- just followed everyone else. Only this was fortuitously a grand idea because who were we to bump into but a frien from the year above at school back home in Sydney, who happened to know all the bes places for us to bar-hop to. We had loads of fun getting free shots and dancing while drinking cocktails. It was also cool that each bar had differently themed music; one place had heavy metal, another had an acoustic singer taking requests (he played Little Lion Man for us!).

By 3.30am we were becoming somewhat aware of our pending 10am ferry and so sadly we called it a night. We could have happily enjoyed a few more nights in Ios though! Making our way through the cobbled streets back to our hostel we reflected on the fun (and sweaty) night we had had and on how excited we were for the continuation of our trip... Next stop: Santorini.