Budapest for a Birthday Festival

Post date: Dec 13, 2019 1:38:37 PM

I have started the tradition of the birthday festival. When I was younger, I used to say to friends: “I love celebrating my birthday, if only you guys could possibly see it in yourselves to throw me a party…”

Now that I’m older: “here is the week long list of things I’m doing to celebrate my birthday, which one can I expect you at?” This year was the 35th annual birthday festival, and to cap off the celebration, I went to Budapest with Penny.

Budapest has long been on the list of “places I want to visit in Europe” and even more so, it was on the list of “places I want to visit in 2019”. However, oddly given that anticipation, I didn’t do any research and showed up entirely unprepared. So we were kind of winging it.

But Fannie is from Hungary, and told me that we had to try Langos: a fried dough that I’ve tried at German Christmas markets. Let me tell you, the Germans are terrible at making food not of their own heritage, and langos are no exceptions.

They were amazing. Revelatory. Incredible. Indescribable.

But overall, that’s the general sentiment about Budapest. It has glorious views, lovely palace.

It was a pleasant surprise, all around.

And warmer than we expected. These buildings were simply lovely and looking over the river. But because they were lovely, they were covered with tourists.

Which, apparently, I found hilarious.

We climbed to the top of this cathedral thingy, which had spectacular views of the city. In fact, I’m just going to leave a bunch of photos that we took here. It was a magnificent city, from almost every angle.

Then, just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, we found a miniture street exhibit thing. It of course, immediately cast us back to Miniature Wunderland in Hamburg which remains one of our favorite things we have ever done.

There is a point in every trip when Penny and I give up on trying to be tourists and start instead eating and drinking. Depending on how interesting the city is this hour of the day can shift significantly from very early to rather late.

Budapest was the rare exception. We were still stoked about the plenty of things to see, but Penny had heard of and wanted to check out the ruin bars.

It’s a thing, they take run down and dilapidated buildings and make them into bars or night clubs.

They were, admittedly, SUPER cool.

And with our last day we had decided two things: 1) We are coming back to Budapest some day and 2) as a result Penny indulged my love of spas.

That’s right, we spent the WHOLE. DAY. at this historic/old Budapest baths. I didn’t get many photos (I’m not an influencer, and I don’t want my phone to get wet), but it was AWESOME.

On a related note: Penny doesn’t like baths like I do. I now owe her BIG TIME.