Day 10 - Mike and Jessica left this morning :(. We will miss you guys. Thank you for sharing in this wonderful time. It's a bittersweet day since it's the last one for Budapest and the group is no longer complete. Olichka and I decided to go on the 4.5 bike tour of both Buda and Pest and made it there by the skin of our teeth.
The tour is one of my favorite things about Budapest. I wish we did it sooner and I wish I had more time here. Our tour group consisted of me, Olichka, another girl and the tour guide. it was very well paced and we stopped at monuments and got a little of the history. Our guide was very nice and very knowledgeable about all things Budapest. He even took us back to Szechenyi and had us drink the sulphurous water. We had a choice of hot or cold(lukewarm) and Olichka was a hero and asked for hot. You are a better woman than I am, miss Balbekova. There is nothing like drinking warm water that tastes like a rotten egg. After this form of torture and biking around for a little bit more we stopped off at a local restaurant and had amazing goulash. five stars for the goulash and the paprika spread that it comes with. I will remember this soup on cold winter nights and sigh to myself.
Fueled up by the soup we made the somewhat challenging trip up to Castle hill on our bikes. I don't think I will be able to sit down for a couple of days. Cobblestone roads for 4 hours + biking uphill = pain. All the pain is completely worth it for the view of Buda and Pest that you get once you are up there. Breathtaking. The ride down is pretty fun too and really really fast. Just a quick stop at the Market and we are done with our tour. I highly recommend it to anyone going to Budapest. Our guide's name was Matte, but I doubt you will get him since he is moving to Amsterdam for 2 years while he is getting his graduate degree. He is responsible for a lot of the love I feel towards Budapest. Thank you Matte.
After having some coffee one last time in Budapest Olichka and I met up with Yan and Smazo and we shared a ride to the airport. Yan forgot his I phone on the plane, but otherwise we flew without incident. (things lost = 4). Goodbye Budapest, Hello Helsinki.
By the time we arrived to City Center is was about 12:30 am and the place looked deserted. we opted to walk to Olichka's hostel and at least leave our bags there. Our original plan was to party at night but walking through the city it didn't look like there were a lot of places that we could do that. Thankfully the hostel had a triple room available which we happily booked. We were checked in by 1:10 and the bars in Helsinki close at 2. It just wasn't worth going somewhere for 20 minutes when we were all exhausted.
Day 11 - the weather was cloudy and gloomy and maybe this is why I hated Helsinki so much. We had a couple of hours to kill co we went to Callio which is supposed to be the happening place to be. Everything was closed. and the buildings are gloomy and uninteresting. Even the parks have gravel instead of grass. The couple of monuments and ornamental buildings that we did see were only remarkable due to how huge they were in comparison to the other buildings. They are build on a disproportionate scale. Other than that, I have nothing to really say. I am glad that we didn't have more time here, but our trip was so packed with fun and goodness the rest of the time that I don't really mind.
Yanik and I said our goodbyes to Olichka and flew back to Chicago. I found out this morning that Finnair recovered Yan's cellphone (things lost = 3) so he will get it back once she's in the states. Thank you to Mike Livschiz, Yan Pritzker, Jessica Ogulnik, Olya Balbekova, and Stan Mazo for a great vacation. It's been amazing.
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