Budapest, Vienna, and Salzburg

Shannon Wood
Feb 4, 2015
6 min read

Nothing beats starting out a trip to Budapest better than a twelve-hour bus ride. Well, it was not as bad as I thought. One of my best friends and I, Ashley, took on this adventure together. We left from Florence at about 9pm. This trip was a breeze compared to the London trip. Boarded the bus, and we were off for an amazing weekend.

The bus was a nice big coach bus. We had the luxury of somehow getting our own seats, and they recline too! The first movie we watched was 50 First Dates, a classic. I stayed awake for that one and only movie. After that, I was asleep. I only was awake at one of the rest stops before sleeping through the entire night. I must say I did not expect too. When I woke up we had arrived in Budapest, the first stop on the list.

We all filed off the bus, and walked a few short blocks to our hotel. We had been told some of the rooms were ready. Ash and I were crossing our fingers one of them was ours. Well, unfortunately we did not get lucky this time. So we would have to wait until after the tour. We then headed to the bathroom to freshen up, quickly brush our teeth, and add some extra layers for the walking tour.

10AM we start our walking tour. We walked all over the city. The first stop on the list was the market. It was cute and much cleaner than Florence. We admired all the architecture surrounding us. In the market the expensive food was on the right, and cheaper food on the left. We would obviously go with the cheaper food. We walked around looking at all of our options before choosing our food. I ended up with a hot sausage and potato wedges. It was a yummy meal. Ash and I could have stayed all day in the market, but unfortunately we had to continue the tour.

After the market, we walked across the bridge to this park. The park over looked the entire city. The views were so beautiful. You could see everything. It was a bit chilly though. Here is where we also saw some type of castle, and the changing of the guard, which was pretty cool. We then had some free time to look around. By this time we were freezing. We attempted to find a gift shop to get warm in. This then caused us to be late, and get lost. The tour guide was a very very brisk walker. We thought we had more time than we did. Good thing one of the Euro Adventure guides was with us. Later we found out she is an Interior Design student at Kent. What a small world! We decided to just take a street and follow the river. The streets led us to a view right in front of parliament. Getting lost isn’t always a bad thing. We made it back to the hotel just a few minutes before everyone us.

Finally, we were able to rest for a little. Well, not for long. We were headed to the thermal baths at 3:30pm. We were both excited for this! It was such an awesome experience! Budapest does have a subway system. It was not too confusing, but not as easy as the one in London.

When we got to the baths our mouths dropped. They were awesome! We quickly changed into our bathing suites, and hopped in the warm water. One of the baths even had a whirlpool. There were many types of baths. There were salt water baths, extremely hot baths, cold baths, baths where people were exercising, dry saunas, wet saunas, and message rooms. Anything you wanted this place had it! We spent about 2 hours there before we were headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

Dinner was amazing! We did a group dinner. The place we went too was unlimited food, beer, wine, and champagne for two hours. There was a huge buffet with all you could imagine, and also a hibachi style place. Let me just say we took advantage of it all!

After dinner, we went to this ruins bar. It was pretty cool. Very crowded. We spent the night dancing and enjoying the nightlife in Budapest. I bought this pretty cool sweatshirt from the ruins bar. There was one odd thing about this bar. They sold carrots as a snack. You would see people walking around just eating a large carrot. Well, as I am purchasing my sweatshirt. Ashley decides to grab a carrot, take a huge bite of it (while the lady is back getting my sweatshirt), and then put it back. She didn’t want it anymore. Unfortunately, the lady at the counter spotted Ash and goes two euros please? The look on Ashley’s face was priceless.

The next morning, we were up and ready to go to Vienna. We had an early morning breakfast, and then took about a three-hour bus ride to Vienna. When arriving to the hostel at Vienna, we freshened up again and headed out for the walking tour. This tour was not as long, but was much colder. We saw Mozart’s house, the cathedral, a famous coffee house, the Bermuda triangle, the Jewish Synagogue, and the famous horse stables. The horse stables were my favorite part of course! After the tour we headed back to the hostel to relax. We were exhausted. We took a nap before going out looking for dinner.

Ashley and I walked around the main area looking for a place to eat. The first place we went into was packed. I think we needed reservations. We then came across this Greek restaurant. Go figure. We are there. We had a lovely dinner. I had amazing shrimp. It was a great choice. We then headed to the Bermuda triangle for a few cocktails before headed to bed for the night.

Sunday morning we were up an early again! We were now off to Salzburg for the Sound of Music tour! When getting to Salzburg it was pretty quiet. There was just a few café’s open. We grabbed a little snack before the tour. On the tour we saw many of the sights from the movie, and of course sang the whole soundtrack! Did you know the house in the movie is actually two different houses? The first house used when Maria sings about Confidence she opens the gate at a yellow house. The back of the house is actually white! We got to see the gazebo, the mountains the children rode in the train, the place where the children danced through the trees, and the church the couple got married at. Did you also know they had three more kids together, escaped on train to Italy, and were married in 1927 the Nazi came in 1938? Finally, did you know the real reason for Maria was to tutor one of the girls who fell ill? Just some fun facts about the true Sound of Music.

We had the best Apple Strudel on the tour. It was at this little café. It was warm with warm vanilla. I would eat it everyday if I could. After the tour we grabbed a quick Weiner schnitzel for the bus and headed on our trip home. The mountains were beautiful on the way back. We got to watch a sunset through the beautiful mountains of Austria. I can’t even describe the beautiful hillsides and skies. What we thought was going to be a six to seven hour bus ride turned into a ten-hour bus ride. We hit a huge snowstorm on the way back. It slowed us down. We got home at about 2:30am.

Overall it was an amazing trip! I would not trade it for the world! It was get memories with great people. Two more countries off the list!

Total hours on a bus so far: 22.