Budapest, Hungary

May 11 - 13, 2007
Another weekend, another beautiful city....

So I'm a little behind on my blog due to a little food poisoning issue that came up Sunday night and is finally starting to go away - and then I just kept putting it off after that, but here's what went down my last weekend in Europ:

Friday, May 11
Amanda, one of our other co-workers and my "buddy", dropped Rafael and I off at the airport with plenty of time to spare since we're right near Schipol...our travel companions for the weekend, Shannon and Kevin, were running a little late and ALMOST missed the flight. Lucky enough, they both made it. We made it to Budapest around 8:30pm and caught a cab to our hotel (aka Marriott Exec Apts). We actually stayed at this 2 bedroom apt run by the Marriott. They weren't as nice as the other hotels, but cheaper and we only needed 2 bedrooms anyways - 1 for the girls and 1 for the boys. After a little confusion about where our place was, we finally found it and quickly settled in. I called one of my friend's from Dallas who now lives in Szeged, Hungary to let him know that we got in ok. He suggested that we go to this restaurant called Pampas, an Argentinian Steakhouse, for dinner and he'd meet up with us tomorrow.
We wandered around a bit and finally found our way to Pampas only 30 minutes before they were going to close down for the night. I asked nicely if they would let us in and Shannon made it clear to them that we were Americans and we ate fast. They agreed to serve us and boy were we glad. That's by far been the BEST meal I've had on this trip. Shannon and I both had this chicken with melted parmesan cheese and garlic mashed potatoes with asparagus...mouth-watering and extremely delicious!! I don't even want to know what was put in there, it was just tooo good. The boys both had variations of steak and thoroughly enjoyed their meals as well. Wow, my mouth's watering just thinking about how good that food was. That and I haven't eaten a meal in several days but I'll get to that later.

So after dinner we walked around, did some window shopping and admired the architecture of the buildings. Surprisingly, most of the buildings are fairly new (within a few hundred years) because of fires, wars, etc. that tore the old buildings down. Many beautiful statues were carved into the buildings themselves and some statues were sprinkled here and there randomly. Shannon was tired after dinner so we walked her back to the hotel and me and the boys did some more exploring to find a bar or a club or something since we weren't tired. Since our hotel/apt was situated in the shopping area of "Pest", there weren't too many night spots so we just found an outside bar and chilled there while enjoying the warm weather and people watching. The guys definitely enjoyed the people-watching more than me - Eastern European girls are gorgeous and wear pretty skimpy clothes...the Eastern European men - not so hot.

After a couple hours of hanging out we headed back to the hotel to get a few hours of sleep before our busy day of sight-seeing. We took the EUrama bus which is a "hop-on/hop-off" tour that takes you around the city (both sides of the Danube river - Buda and Pest). You can jump off the bus at any of the stops and walk around the area and jump on the next bus that comes around 30 minutes later. It was a pretty good deal and we spent all morning and a good part of the afternoon. I took lots of pictures of course!

Saturday, May 12, 2007

We got up around 9am to grab some breakfast and head out to catch our bus tour. It was a really great way to see the city. We drove by the Parliament where we got off and took some pictures of the outside. Unfortunately due to tight security these days, you're only allowed to go inside the building if you're with a group tour. The building (actually 3 buildings built by 3 different guys) was gorgeous though!

We jumped on the next bus and passed by St. Stephen's Basilica and the Synagogue - in the top 5 of the largest in the world. We drove around the Pest side a little more and saw some other sites, then crossed the bridge and into Buda. I definitely liked this side more mainly because of the views and mountainous areas...I'll always be an outdoors-y girl :-). We "hopped off" the bus at the base of the mountain and took a little trolley to the top where we took a bunch of pictures around the castle district. I bought some really cute coffee mugs from a street vendor that are my school colors - orange and blue..too cute! We goofed off and hung around a while then headed back to our bus stop to catch the bus back to where our hotel was located. So this is a small mistake we made, but caused us to miss out on a great view of the Parliament/Pest and seeing the actual Castle. Rafael told us that we were at the "castle", so we didn't explore too much to some other areas on the opposite side of where we were. Shannon later found out that we were 5 minutes from it and was so determined to see the castle that she caught a cab from our hotel to go back there. She loved it though and was glad she went back. I'll have to get her pics and post them.

I was so exhausted from our day and previous late night that I went back to the hotel and took a good 3 hour nap! It definitely helped though cause Sat. night ended up being later than Friday night. My friend Ankur from Dallas FINALLY made it to Budapest from Szeged, Hungary where his school is. It's supposed to be a 3 hour train ride but ended up taking 6 hours because somebody committed suicide on the train tracks. Apparently it's not an uncommon thing around there. He had a test on Monday, so luckily he had brought his books and was able to get a good amount of studying in (so I didn't feel SO bad). He got in and me, him and Shannon went to a restaurant called Pomo D'Oro. Well...we took a little detour by accident first. Cab was the easiest thing to do, so Ankur told this cabby that we wanted to go to Pomo D'Oro and the cab driver wasn't exactly sure where it was. After calling someone he ended up taking us to some random residential area on the Buda side whereas the restuarant we wanted to go to was on the Pest side. We had to go to a nearby gas station and have them call another cab to take us to the right place. One thing I'll say though is that I'm really impressed with Ankur. He'd been in Hungary for less than a year and picked up the language pretty well - a very difficult language at that! It made me proud to see one of my Dallas boys get out there (being the sandtrap I call Dallas) and experience and embrace a completely different culture :-).

So finally we got to Pomo D'Oro around 9ish and since we didn't make reservations and the restaurant was packed, we had to wait about an hour to get a table. The manager was great though and offered us each a glass of wine...Ankur made us try some Hungarian red wine which was actually really good!! and I'm not much of a red wine fan...so we chilled and caught up until our table was ready. The food was pretty good and we ordered a bottle of some other red wine (unfortunately it wasn't as good as the first wine we had). I also prefered Pampas from Friday's dinner MUCH more.

We got back to the hotel around 11ish and once again, Shannon decided to call it a night. I was pretty set on going out and we called up Rafael and Kevin B. to see if they wanted to go out with us. I knew that this was the only chance they'd have to hit up some clubs cause they wouldn't find any on their own. Of course they came right away and we cabbed it to what I call "Club Island". It was sooo crazy! Basically some "island" off of the Buda side where people are just walking around going from club to club. There was even a club on a boat in the water which was surrounded by 4 or 5 other clubs. The clubs also had a very "Miami" feel to them and of course there were gorgeous Eastern European women walking around in skin-tight or very little clothing. The boys loved it! It was definitely a good people watching night for me but they also played a good mix of music that we could dance too. We all had a great time but the clubs were a lot more expensive than we anticipated. Also, unlike US clubs, it was cash-only. We ran out of cash pretty fast so we were only able to get a couple drinks in. It's all good though cause we had a blast! Around 4am we were getting pretty tired and decided to head back to the hotel. Being my usual self, we got back to the hotel and I was STARVING! Unfortunately nothing was open that late and we didn't have a minibar available for me to raid. The concierge was great though and told us that we could order pizza, so he took care of that for me and I hit it up. The pizza wasn't good at all, but I ate it since I was soooo hungry. Due to a certain person's snoring, I couldn't bring myself to sleep in my room again (I slept on a very small and uncomfortable couch both Friday and Saturday nights) and poor Ankur slept on the floor! It was really great catching up with him and I think I fell asleep around 6am.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

(side note - Happy Mother's Day! and Happy Birthday Brian,RIP)

Again an early morning. We had to check out/leave our hotel by noon so Shannon and I got up around 9am to go check out the Synagogue and St. Stephen's Basilica since the Synagogue was closed on Saturday. We walked to the Synagogue first and when we found out how much it was to go inside (10 euro/person), we took a peak inside and decided that it was enough to take pictures from the outside. We had to budget our money so we had enough to check out St. Stephen's and take a cab back to the airport from the hotel. Plus, we were short on time and could see the inside of both. We got our pics and then headed to St. Stephen's Basilica which was beautiful as they all are! We paid a few bucks and went up the tower to the top and got a great view of Pest. It was really nice and relaxing but we couldn't stay there too long as we had to get back to the hotel.

We got back, the boys were ready and Ankur was also about to head out. We got to the airport with a little time to spare so we grabbed some Sbarro (I had a mushroom pizza which may have been the culprit of my food poisoning). Passed out on the plane back to Amsterdam and when I got back to the hotel, my brother Raj was there to meet me! He had taken a 1 1/2 day layover in Amsterdam on his way to Vienna for a work conference so we could hang out and he could see Amsterdam. It was really nice to hang out with my brother and just catch up with eachother and even get to know eachother better since we really had never spent much time together growing up as there's a 6 yr difference. I was exhausted but I knew there was no time to waste. I had heard of this really great Indonesian place from the bike tour guy and Raj and I walked over that way. The food was really good and we had a nice talk and then decided to go check out the Red Light District. I'll admit, it was pretty weird to take my older brother to the Red Light District, but you can't go to Amsterdam without seeing it...it's definitely an interesting experience. So more walking...unfortunately my stomach started hurting and I couldn't fully enjoy the evening. Being a True Varma, my brother had a sweet tooth and I took him to Australian's for some ice cream on our way back to the hotel. He had to pick between a Heineken or ice cream and I think he made the right choice. :-)

We got back to the hotel and I ended up staying up all night, running to the bathroom every hour and couldn't get over some crazy chills. Still not exactly sure what I had, but I was in bad shape for the next 3 days. I felt really bad that I couldn't take Raj out Monday night, but I hadn't eaten all day or slept the night before, so I was in no condition to do anything but lay in bed. We just hung out some more and he packed for his trip to Vienna the next morning. It was really great seeing my bro and I'm glad he made a stopover to visit :-).

So that's pretty much the end of my trip to Amsterdam. Unfortunately it didn't leave a great taste in my mouth from the food poisoning incident, but I had a really great "first audit".

These days I've been hanging out in Chicago, getting "settled" - as much as possible but not too much as I'm moving again in a few months. Loving the weather and enjoying my new-found friends and their company...of course keeping busy as I love to do.

Next trip - Romania...we're leaving on June 7th and stopping over in Istanbul on the way there. Should be an interesting trip. I mean, who goes to Romania right? Me and Rafael are working together again on this audit and I couldn't be happier. He's pretty chill and has been great about getting me acclimated to the work environment, etc.

That's it for now! Till next week :-)