Budapest at night

This is the second post of the day, so you might want to check out part one first.

http://www.travelwithkevinandruth.com/2012/09/exploring-budapest.html

Exploring Budapest

Budapest is a fairly large city, in fact the seventh largest in Europe with a population of 1.7 million people. The city is separated by the Danube River which runs from North to South through the city. On the west side of the river is the area known as Buda, and on the east side of the river is the area known as Pest.

Arrived in Budapest!

Well, we had a long travel day yesterday, but we did make it to Budapest. We were up at 6:45am and on the bus at 7:40am. Three trains later, we arrived in Budapest at about 3:30pm!

Slovak National Uprising

Got our bags all packed up yesterday morning at 10:00am and asked the desk girl if we could leave our bags in their office until late afternoon. Turns out that she didn't speak any English. So it was Google Translate to the rescue!

Half way to Budapest!

When we were figuring our route to Budapest from Poprad, we had considered doing the journey all in one day. But that would have been a long travel day since there was no easy direct route between the two cities.

Dobsinska Ice Caves

Yesterday morning, we walked to the bus station and waited for the bus to take us to the Unesco listed Dobsinska Ice Caves. Any of our regular readers will know that we like to visit caves, and the ice cave was one of the reasons we wanted to visit this part of Slovakia.

August expenses

Our August costs came in at a total of $1,087.28 and while that sounds very good (and really, it is!) it's also about $200 over our budget for the month. Almost everything else was pretty much within the range that we expected it to be, but accommodation was the category that put us over the $1,000 mark.

Another day in the mountains

We had breakfast at our guest house yesterday morning. Nice enough, but we felt it wasn't really worth the €5.00 ($6.25) per person. So we will make other arrangements for breakfast today and tomorrow.

We planned a hike in the mountains for yesterday, but first we had to get to the mountains!

Made it to Poprad!

So this time, our bus arrived on time at 8:45am yesterday morning, and it was a forty minute ride to Liptovsky Mikulas. There, we caught the train to Poprad.

What happened to our bus?

Yesterday, we sat at the bus stop for a half an hour after our bus was supposed to come by. But the bus never showed up!

Living out of a backpack.

The type of travel that we're doing right now sure is interesting, but I have to admit that I miss traveling in a motorhome.

Hiking into the clouds

Despite the fact that we couldn't see anything, there were still some highlights to this hike!

When no means yes...

There are certainly some funny issues that we've encountered traveling in a country where we don't understand the language. For example, "no" really does mean yes!

Our first hike in Tatra National Park

It's a little difficult to plan a route because there are so many marked hiking trails in this park. We decided on a 16.8 km (10.5 mile) hike with an elevation gain of about 700 metres (2,300 feet).

Travel days are never boring!

So we set off yesterday morning, headed for the village of Zuberec, without any idea of where we were staying. We walked down to the train station in Istebne, with lots of time to wait for our 9:52am train. And we waited. And we waited.