Something to say about the night before, at the Brazil-Ivory Coast World Cup match. Some stinky old lady comes around near the end of all the public viewings of the world cup near our hostel, she picks up bottles and cans to recycle and get money for. She also brings her dog with her... while she was busy bugging people, asking for their bottle, the dog was taking a poop. Keep in mind that this is in the middle of a large crowd of people all staring at a huge screen, with minutes to go in the match. We happened to look in her direction (mostly because she was blocking our view of the screen) and saw her turn around and step directly into a fresh, steaming pile of dog poop!!! We got a huge laugh out of that, and missed a couple minutes of the game, but it was worth it.
Our last day in Budapest started off with a small breakfast of bread with jams, nice and simple. We headed straight for the Hungarian Parliament building... only to find out that it wasn't open for public tours that day because of official business going on. We were pretty bummed out, we had put it off until the last day and missed out. It is one of the oldest and largest Parliament buildings in Europe and the largest building in Hungary. We then decided to head to the central market... and it also started to rain. Every time we go out with an umbrella, we get clear skies, but when we forget it, it always seems to rain.
The central market hall has tons of little stalls on 2 floors. Meats, cheeses, fruits, and vegetables and various spices on ground level and a lot of tourist goods and a lineup of food stands on the next. I (Tres) bought some spices that we used at dinner in the hostel. I thought they were pretty good so decided to take some home, it is actually the first thing we've bought to take home! We don't have any other souvenirs, except for pictures/video and our memories. For lunch we had some "Hungarian" hamburgers, they were different. Full of spices, very tasty, but a little too peppery for our tasty. It was a change though, and we're always willing to try different things (well... I am, maybe not Meghan).
Next, we headed out towards a park where a lot of the baths are located, just to see what they were like. We got there by metro and decided to slowly walk back to the city center. Saw some interesting things. There was a castle looking thing off the road a bit, so we ventured towards it. It was the Hungarian Agricultural Museum, in the shape of a castle, with large front gate, moat, and all. We decided not to go in because we can get all the agriculture we want at NC State!
Heading towards the center more, we passed by Hero's Square, originally built in 1896 for the millennium celebration of Hungary. Damaged in WWII and rebuilt afterward. A Hungarian Prime Minister was re-buried there, who was executed for treason in 1958, for opposing the Soviet invasion during the failed Hungarian Revolution in 1956. We left there to go get coffee!!! Meghan was starting to have withdrawals. We also watched the end of the Portugal and North Korea World Cup match (7-0!).
We finished up our walk towards the center of the city near St. Stephens Basilica and some of the main tourist areas in Budapest. We were looking for some pizza for dinner, didn't find much where we were at, so took the metro out to where we passed a pizza restaurant earlier that day. It was an Italian/fancy shmancy kind of place, the pizza was very good, but expensive. We finished up dinner with some more coffee (cappuccinos and milchkaffee have become our favorite drink), and headed back to the hostel to pick up our bags and head out.
Oh, yeah... and we stopped at the park near the hostel so I could play in the interactive fountain. it is a wall of water squirting up in a rectangle shape on the ground. When you step near the water, that area turns off.
That fountain is so awesome!
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