Eastern European Tour, Part 1

So, this blog post has been a bit daunting, and for that, it is long overdue. Sorry about that. But for the sake of the fact that I still have to write about Sweden, and Easter is coming up, plus another trip to a different city... yeah, I'd better attempt to get caught up. Here we go--Easter Europe, part one: Budapest and Vienna :)

The night before I left, I came home from teaching to find all of this on the counter waiting for me:

My host mom was so worried about me "starving to death" on the bus, that she went out and bought ALL this food for me! I tried to fit it all in one backpack but could barely do so. It was so cute! (and delicious)

Needless to say, I felt very loved. This trip was off to a great start!

The "Castle" that we found whilst exploring 

The next morning it was off to the Vokzal to find our tour bus and begin our adventures. After a VERY long day and night of a 25 hour bus-ride, we finally made it to Budapest. They dropped us off in a parking lot and turned us loose to the city for a few hours. We just walked around and explored. It was a little cold and overcast, but we didn't care, heck, we'd just survived a Ukrainian winter! This was child's play. :)
After our exploring we met back at the bus for a walking-tour, and the Ukrainian leader of our bus surprised us by finding us an English tour guide! We were ecstatic. On the bus, there were many times when a Russian tour guide would come on and babble words we could not understand for sometimes 2 hours at a time. We thought that this would be the case for the entire tour, but luckily, we were wrong.

Rollerblading right on the town square
is a perfectly acceptable thing
 to do in Budapest, apparently. 

It didn't take me long to realize that I completely LOVE BUDAPEST. It is such a friendly city. It is all about recreation and getting out and enjoying yourself. There are parks everywhere, and walking/running trails too. There is even an entire island on the river dedicated to solely recreation, ie running trails, and no cars are allowed on it.
There were so many people out walking their dogs, rollerblading, riding bikes, etc. I loved it!



Budapest is divided by the river into two cities: Buda, and Pesh.  One side is all flat, and the other side is set on a hill, and this was my favorite part. We hiked to the top of this hill and the view was marvelous. Pictures can't really do it justice, but I tried:

The view was worth the hike!

After a while the sun decided to come out, and we enjoyed the evening just exploring the other side of the city with our ENGLISH tour guide. That was my favorite part, just walking around the little cobblestone streets and watching our tour guide greet all of her friends in the shops and on the streets. Everyone was so friendly, or maybe it was just because it was our first time outside of Ukraine for so long? We were a little bit in culture-shock, and I had to keep reminding myself that I could take off my "Ukrainian stone face" and be a little bit more myself in this city.

We met up at the bus and were taken to our hotel, where Anna and I made a tasty backpacker's dinner (soup and mashed potatoes) and collapsed in bed. What a day!

The next day I woke up feeling a little bit like a kid on Christmas morning. I was practically jumping up and down-- this was it, the day I would finally get to go to VIENNA!

We hopped on the bus and were on our way, only a few hours away.

We spent exactly 4 hours in Vienna.

Was I content? Was it everything I hoped it would be?

Absolutely.

Let's be honest, I would have been fine just staring at a brick wall, as long as I knew it was in Vienna. I was just glad to have made it there after dreaming about it so long. I knew nothing remarkable would happen, there would be no huge parade or fireworks, and there would be no "Shvenn"...(ask me about that one later). But, I was content just being there, because it is such an amazing feeling to know you worked your tail off and now something you have anticipated and hoped for has finally happened. 

It was a gorgeous day. We didn't get an english tour guide this time, so we just explored, and had a blast in the process.

Janelle and I

I don't think we ever quite figured out which church this was, but it was beautiful.

On the Metro trying to find Marie Antoinette's palace

After getting a little lost...we found it!

The gardens behind the palace were HUGE

Our group in the *FREE* bathroom that we found...ha

After 4 hours of exploring my lovely city we were back on the bus and headed for Prague. I don't have time to write about it now, as I have to go get ready and teach the little munchkins, but...I am pretty proud of myself for blogging this far, so I'm just going to post this. 

To be continued................