Hungary

We've just arrived in Florence, Italy, (I think we've stumbled into the spanish district though..) and soon will get to our hostel. We left Prague on the train and headed onto Austria, to visit Alice's friend Nicole and her Husband Adrain, and their two children, one of whom is very new. It was so good to have a break from the typical travelling, we got to stay in a real bedroom and have real home cooked food and have real conversations with people we knew (I didn't really know them prior to this). It was such an excellent time. The place we stayed at was about half an hour south from Vienna, in a lovely little village. We went swimming in possibly the coolest pool I've ever been in, and also went to a celtic festival. Turns out that the celts didn't just inhabit Scotland, but also a hell of a lot of Northern Europe too. It was a great time, I tried my hand at ordering drinks and food using the best German I could speak and failed. It was a pretty good experience, and probably something we never would have done if we'd just travelled there alone. Staying with Nicole & Adrain was such a highlight of this trip. Unfortunately I was also recovering from being sick, so I wasn't quite up for everything.

We got on a lovely train from Vienna to Budapest, Hungary. Wow, what a cool city. I don't really know exactly how to put my finger on what was so great about it, but it was one of our favorite cities we visited. It has a lot of history from the wars too, we visited a WW2 bunker up in the citadel, and Alice got lots of Hungarian souvineirs. We spent 4 nights in a hotel for a change. It was so sweet, to have our own room and privacy and our very own toilet and shower! The food was pretty cheap, and the city was just lovely to walk around.

Unfortunately we had to leave, we hopped on the sleeping train yesteday afternoon and spent the trip talking to a med student from Germany with perfect english. We got into Zurich this morning and tossed up staying there or coming here to Florence, and coming here won out. We've yet to get to our hostel, they don't open until 4, and then have an explore of this city which so far seems pretty nice.
- Andrew

Seems like such a long time since we have had a chance to write here! Prague for us fizzled out after our day there. We tried to go out to this huge nightclub we had heard about but ended up getting there too late for cheap entrance, with no map and no idea when the bus home finishes. The club was 5 floors high, 4 of which were empty when we arrived and slowly filled up with skanky tourists. Staying with Nicole, Adrian, Emilia and Marlon was great, thanks guys!!! such special times.
For me Hungary was amazing, a city so recently effected by communism and war and its scars still visible. It struck me that although this is the case the biggest souvineir market was childrens toys. It was pretty nice to stay in the Ramada too!!!
-Alice