Budapest {Snowstorms and swimming}

In November 2010 Hamish and I made a last minute trip to the land of Goulash and Paprika...aka Budapest, Hungary. Prior to this weekend break I honestly had no idea that Buda and Pest were actually two separate places separated by a river (even though they were unified as one single city in 1973)!

I really had no idea what to expect from Budapest, I didn't know of anyone who had been there before so it was all down to tripadvisor to know what to see and where to go. We stayed in the Pest side of the city at a great little hotel called the K+K  Opera Hotel Budapest, which was in the perfect location right near a Metro station and really central.  Since we landed pretty late on the Friday night we only had time for a quick dinner and not much else. It should be said however, that while we were eating our dinner, the classic Eurotrash song Papa Americano  {the theme song from our weekend in Bruges} came over the radio and even though we were eating at Subway, I knew we were in Europe. 

Winter Wonderland 

Saturday morning we awoke to a white winter wonderland. Overnight it had started to snow and the whole city was covered in the prettiest white dusting of powder. I love snow- like little kid on Christmas love! Had we had this weather back in London the whole city would have come to a stand still, but the Hungarians were well equipped and everything ran as normal with absolutely nothing disrupted or delayed. I was very impressed.  

Me in the Snow!

Hamish in the Snow!

After taking some mandatory silly snow pics, we made our way down to the river to book a river cruise along the Danube.   Now as much as I would love to say this was a magical, wonderful  boat ride - it was not. It was possibly one of the worst tours ever. The boat was freezing, and the commentary was recorded by a woman who sounded like a robot. It was so monotonous that if it weren't for the freezing temperature I probably would have fallen asleep. Added to that was the fact that due to the coldness of the air coupled with the heat of everyone in the boat, the windows steamed up something crazy and we could barely see out of them. Quite frankly, I was delighted when the whole thing was over.

With near-frostbitten toes and hands, we walked across the beautiful Széchenyi Chain Bridge to the Buda side of the city. Here we took the funicular to the top of Castle Hill where Buda Castle is situated. The gardens were beautiful, especially covered in snow. There was a little market on at the top and with the snow and the grey sky it felt like we were living in the olden days.  We wandered around the castle grounds and through some of the castle buildings, enjoying all the lovely sculptures and statues and old school charm.  I really enjoyed the castle, and would love to go back and see it and its magnificent views on a clear and sunny day.

Chain Bridge (image via)

Saturday night was the absolute highlight of the trip for me, and possibly one of my best travel memories ever.  We walked through the city covered in snow and went to the famous Szechenyi baths. It was only early evening when we arrived, but it was already fully dark and it was still snowing. After changing out of warm and cosy winter snow gear and into my bikini, I made my way outside to meet Hamish at the pool. This was done barefoot and through the snow. It was a tad chilly, but climbing into the deliciously warm spa pool straight from the snow was the best feeling. I can't really describe how perfect the setting was. Snow, steam from the hot water, old fashioned spa pools and romantic lighting - literally magical. Needless to say we stayed in the pools for as long as we could. There were massive outdoor pools and a labyrinth of indoor ones too, with  different temperatures, different mineral compositions and different colours - you could literally get lost for hours in there. It was such a perfect night. When we were finally kicked out at closing time I was more than a little sad to go. 

Outdoor Pools at night via

On Sunday, our final day in Budapest, we spent the day walking around the city and just taking in the lovely old buildings, city centre and even went to a few museums. On our way back to the hotel to get ready to leave to the airport we stumbled across a little Christmas market. This was the first Christmas market I experienced and mixed in with the snow and wintery weather it was amazing. There is definitely something to be said about Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere, it is so festive and magical. I love it.  At the market we sampled some of the local Hungarian food, such as the most delicious {but ridiculously sweet and filling} Pastry type delicacies called Kürtőskalács. Our eyes were definitely bigger than our stomachs and Hamish and I ordered one each which resulted in us both feeling slightly ill afterwards {and we didn't even finish them!} - I would definitely recommend sharing one! 

Christmas Market fun!

Kürtőskalács cooking

Overall, Budapest was the perfect way to get into the spirit and flow of Christmas and a beautiful city with so much history. I would love to go back one day soon and see a bit more of Hungary.

Fun Facts about Budapest/Hungary: 

• Budapest is home to the third largest Parliament building in the world. 
• Budapest has the oldest subway line in mainland Europe, it was opened in 1896 and is still in use as Subway M1. 
• The word 'coach' derives from the name of the Hungarian town Kocs, where multi-passenger wheeled vehicles first appeared around 1500.
• The title character "Wally" in the Where's Wally books is known as Vili in Hungary.

Pint of Beer Price {as of December 2013} = £1.00 

A weekend in Wales {Cardiff and Horse riding in the Black Mountains}

Soon after we returned from an amazing long weekend in Bruges a few of us decided to take another group trip. This time the destination was within the United Kingdom - Wales! We used the same travel company as before and departed from London early on a Saturday morning.  The drive from London to the Black Mountains in Wales is not a very long one , which meant that we were able to stop off at different locations along the way.  

Who knew Nepal was in Wales!

Our first stop was an adorable little Welsh village called Hay-on-Wye. It is also commonly referred to as the "town of books" {right up my alley!}. Not surprisingly the streets are lined with bookshops, but my favourite of all the shops was the "Honesty Book Shop". This can be found in some of the Hay Castle outbuilding ruins and is an open air  "shop" where there is no till and no money exchanged. All books cost £0.50 or £1 and there are donation boxes at various points for people to drop in their coins. All proceeds go to the upkeep and maintenance of Hay Castle. I really loved the whole idea of this. 

Honesty Bookshop donation box

After some delicious tea and cakes we made our way up the Black Mountains to the horse riding stables we would be riding with that afternoon.  The Black Mountains aren't really mountains, more like gentle rolling hills. Our guide told us that they were named after the Heather which is found growing on the hills giving them a black appearance at times. Whether or not this is true, I'm not sure, but I liked the explanation in any case.

Black Mountains (image via)

The horse riding was a highlight of the trip, but not for the reasons I expected. I have done a fair bit of riding over the years, and was probably one of the more confident riders on the trip and not at all nervous. While we were sitting on our mounts in the yard while everyone else was tacking up, my horse was so gentle and calm, not a care in the world. Hamish however, had a more temperamental horse {also a LOT bigger than my one} which was whinnying and thrashing its head from side to side - needless to say I don't think he was feeling to happy about that! I shouldn't have enjoyed his discomfort quite so much because as soon as we got under way, his horse was a dream and mine, well mine literally went mental. I spent the better part of two hours fighting for my life {slight exaggeration, but not really}. If we were walking along an edge with a steep drop, my horse would start bucking and trying to kick me off the edge. If there was a tasty bit of grass anywhere along the route, my horse would drop its head so fast I would practically go flying off. It definitely kept me on my toes. The most entertaining part happened right at the end when we were nearing the stables. A local farmer nearby was washing his tractor with a power hose and the noise spooked my horse so badly he reared up and starting going backwards into all the other horses and also back onto a road. Calming him down was no easy feat and I was rather happy when we returned to the stables and said goodbye to our horses. Despite the crazy horse, I still really enjoyed the ride and the scenery was beautiful.

Cardiff Castle

Cheese Festival Cow

We spent the night in Cardiff and experienced a night out on the town. Cardiff is a big university town, so the nightlife is lots of fun and we did a small self-guided pub crawl before calling it a night.  We had a few hours to explore Cardiff on Sunday before heading back to London and managed to fit in most of the major sites, including Cardiff Castle and the Millennium stadium. The Castle was beautiful, lovely green grounds and they were busy setting up for a cheese festival which I wished we could have enjoyed. The Millennium stadium tour was pretty interesting, they use the stadium for all sorts of things, from Rugby matches to Big Truck driving contests. 

Our final stop of the trip was Chepstow Castle. This was probably one of the first old castles I have visited since being in the UK and I loved it. You could definitely imagine how it would have felt to live in such a place all those years ago. Chesptow Castle is situated on the cliffs over looking the River Wye and is the oldest surviving post-Roman stone fortification in Britain. The pictures below describe it better than any words of mine could. 

Beautiful! 

River Wye 

Group Shot in the Castle :) 

Another successful weekend, and this one, right on our doorstep. I am really looking forward to going back to Wales one day in the future and seeing some more of its beautiful scenery. 

Fun Facts about Wales: 

• Cardiff is one of the flattest cities in Britain and has more hours of sunlight than Milan.
• Mount Everest was named after a Welshman, Sir George Everest from Gwernvale, Breconshire.
• Wales is thought to have more castles per square mile than anywhere else in the World. 
• Less than 25% of the entire population in Wales can actually speak Welsh.
• The letters K, Q and V do not appear in the Welsh alphabet at all. (Longest Welsh word, or part of it, below!)

The Very Beginning {the very best place to start}: Bruges

In August 2010 my friend Pete and I decided to take a weekend coach trip to Belgium. Before this trip, despite living in London and having Europe on my doorstep for over 2 years, I had yet been bitten by the notorious travel bug. Well, this trip changed that, and I couldn't be more thankful I got bit ;)

Originally, there was going to be a big group of us on this trip, but as tends to happen, plans changed and only Pete and I were able to go.  Even though we hadn't been friends for very long, we were still really excited about the weekend and meeting some new people. It just so happens that it was this very weekend where I met Hamish.

Bruges exceeded expectations. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but as I had travelled around Europe with my family when I was younger, I certainly wasn't expecting to fall in love with the little city as much as I did.  It was the end of summer and the weather couldn't have been better for the most part of the weekend. Saturday was spent on the coach, making friends with the other travellers and then we had most of the day to ourselves to explore the old historic city centre. For those of you who don't know, Bruges has a stunning historic city centre(ish). The old town still has much of its medieval architecture in place and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site back in 2000.  It is also completely surrounded by canals with the only access to cars via certain bridges scattered around the centre.

Beautiful Canals

One of my favourite memories of the weekend was a boat trip along these canals. The canal banks are covered in weeping willows and amazing old houses and architecture. Some of the properties literally look like they are about to fall into the water and there are too many beautiful old arched bridges to mention! This was a great way to get our bearings of the city and definitely made navigating afterwards a little easier.

Sampling the local beer

Belgium is renowned for its beer, I particularly enjoyed tasting some of the different flavours. My favourite was the cherry beer...mmmm! In addition to the beer we also sampled a few of the other delicious Belgian delicacies such as Belgian chocolates and truffles. These chocolate shops are everywhere and you are guaranteed to find something you like in all flavours and shapes as you can see in the picture below. Another personal favourite were the fresh, hot Belgian waffles, covered in Nutella or Speculoos and dripping in cream. I had never heard of Speculoos until this weekend, but I highly recommend it to anyone who has the chance to try it. As if we hadn't already consumed our daily calorie intake in the beer, chocolate and waffles, we topped it all off with some triple fried fries. So tasty! {I should probably add this was all before dinner!}

Chocolates!!!

As our group consisted of mostly young people, we had a fantastic night out in Bruges. We drank a few {too many} Jagermeisters, which were only EUR 1.50 or something ridiculously cheap. The atmosphere in general was brilliant - there is definitely such a thing as Eurotrash music, the theme song of the weekend was Papa Americano, which was played at least twice an hour at every single place we went to.  The night consisted of many "TO BRUGES" cheers and lots of dancing in hot and sweaty nightclubs, but was one of my best nights out to date.

Over the weekend we also made a quick train trip into Brussels - it is less than an hour from Bruges to Brussels. To be honest, after the quaint and charming Bruges,  I was not very taken with Brussels. It felt like any other big city.  We did however manage to see the famous Manneken Pis and eat some more waffles before returning back to the loveliness of Bruges.

Nameless Graves

On the way back to England we stopped in the Flanders Field region and visited a memorial site, graveyard and also a trench museum with an area which has been built to replicate the actual trenches of WWI {built in a site where real trenches were}.  Flanders was a really humbling experience. There are so many graves, and we were only able to view one of the remembrance sites. The saddest part for me was seeing the graves without any names on them, someones brother, father, son, died fighting for his country and lost his identity too.  There were also countless walls covered with the names of soldiers from South Africa, New Zealand and Australia which really struck a note with me personally as these people weren't even fighting for their own countries or their own war. What a waste of young life. 

So many headstones

The trench museum was really interesting, you could walk around a trench zone, and as it had rencently rained, it was a bit muddy, which made the experience even more realistic. I quite enjoyed learning about WWI during my school years and would highly recommend doing this part of the trip for anyone else with a similar interest. 

Trench Museum

Overall - this was a fantastic weekend away. Delicious food, new friends, great experiences and the local people were extra friendly and spoke very good English which makes any destination a pleasure.  We managed to do so much in such a short amount of time and when I returned to London, all I wanted to do was book my next weekend/holiday in Europe. Bitten by the bug- August 2010. 

Fun Facts about Bruges:

• Bruges is Know as the Venice of the north and gets its name from the canals that surround it - there are over 80 bridges!
• The singer "Gotye" is originally from Bruges.
• Bruges is the number one tourist destination in Belgium (not surprising!) 
• The city is very liberal and has recognised same sex marriage since 2003.
• Belgium has over 400 types of beer, and Bruges has its very own Beer Museum