Budapest Hungary - Better Late than Never!

Alright so in continuing with my tradition of documenting my trips around the world, even though it's been months now since I've been back from this particular trip, I still want to share with you the good, bad and interesting about these places. I'm grouping the two places together (even though they were drastically different experiences) because I visited them both back to back within a 2 week period (without returning to Canada in between) in October 2009.

Let's start with Budapest
I learned a lot about this place as I was there (didn't really have much time for a lot of research before leaving) and was pleasantly surprised by what I found. It's a beautiful place with a LOT of history, split in half by the Danube river - one side being referred to as "Buda" and the other side referred to as "Pest" (pronounced pesht).  In fact one of the funniest memories I have of this trip was of a boat ride that I took with a friend on the Danube.  It was a tourist boat ride complete with a tour guide who was supposed to be detailing the history behind what we were seeing on each side of the river banks. Instead however, about 75% of his content had to do with details about the hotels in the vicinity. For example, "to the right ladies and gentlemen, we have the X hotel... approx,. Y square feet in size, with Z number of floors, it offers blah blah blah...."  I couldn't stop laughing at how funny all of this was to me cause they certainly were not trying to hide the fact that the ride was being sponsored by these hotels. As a tourist however, it was not the hotels that I was interested in... so to say that the tour fell below my expectations is probably an understatement... lol  Oh well, I still took some nice pictures.

Even found some nice graffiti of my name along the river banks :)

The main Government Building there was quite impressive.

This is a picture of their Palace. Unfortunately I wasn't able to tour it.

I was in Budapest for a gaming affiliate conference and of course took some time to myself on a few off-days to walk around and enjoy the sights.

I noticed that there was something about small elephants and Budapest - not sure exactly what that relationship is (if anyone reading knows and wants to fill me in, feel free to leave a comment!) but I found these little guys everywhere, some colored and decorated, some not...

Crossing the bridge at night into Pest from Buda (I think):

Then of course, as is true with any Affiliate conference - there were the parties... Oh the parties! SOOOO fun... TOOOOO fun!  lol   Here are some pics of places where we partied and the nightlife. In fact, one place we found had a group of about 5 bars which were all open 24hrs (at least that's what it seemed when the party was still alive and kickin when I stumbled out into a cab at about 4:30am...LOL)

And yes, these are upside down people hanging from the ceiling at one of the bars we were at... LOL

Ok so to finish about Budapest, here are a few more notes and things that stood out to me:

• The Service - was HORRIBLE. LOL  At restaurants, we practically had to walk over and grab our waiter by the arm to bring him to our table to take our orders. This happened over and over again and still can't seem to understand it. One time I stood at a bar waiting to be served and was staring at the bartender who had looked at me numerous times. After about 20minutes I started waving and saying HELLOOOOO? and she finally looked up at me with a dirty look and said "the bar is closed, you have to go to the other one in the back of the room for a drink.  WTF?? You made me stand there for 20mins and looked at me over and over before saying that?  Woah....
• The People - seemed to be quiet, somber and almost depressing by nature. I don't know enough about the history of this place to really understand why this might be but I remember noticing that it was rare to see a smile in the streets. Thank god for the super great company I was in keeping me smiling and laughing at all times! (Thanks Mike and Steve! You guys are the best!!)
• The Spas - I didn't realize until the day before I arrived there that Budapest was famous for their spas. I was walking around one day and stumbled quite accidentally on a large group of about a hundred naked people (men and women) in the streets in one area and realized that it was an open spa... well THAT was certainly an interesting sight for an unsuspecting Canadian to stumble on... LOL
• The Churches - apparently there is quite a large jewish population in Hungary. I wasn't aware of this until I saw lots and lots of synagogues. Beautiful buildings...  

Overall Budapest was a fantastic city and I had a fantastic time and I would certainly do it again...