Day 18

Today was a drive day from Vienna to Budapest. We left early- loaded the bus at 7:15 in order to get into Budapest early enough to do some exploring. I was disappointed at this prospect because I was hoping it would be the other way around- have some time to explore Vienna and go into Budapest a bit later. Anyways, we were in the city center around 12:30 and had free time until 2pm when our bus tour started. Matt and I wandered around, got a magnet and some lunch (Goulash and paprika chicken with noodles). The meal was decent, but it took forever to be served so we rushed it and ran over to the bus for the tour.

The bus tour itself wasn’t really all that spectacular. There were parliament buildings, theaters, the same sort of thing they have everywhere really, but we did see a couple cool sights. Those were castles that we drove past on the way, and a vantage point that we actually spent about 20 min at where we were able to have a really nice view of the city.

The bus got us to the Hotel Ibis around 4:30pm for a free night. Hotel Ibis is one that we had been to in Paris and loved because it is not a hostel- it’s actually a hotel. Twin rooms, showers and toilets in the room, towels, soap... pretty amazing! We even had a balcony! 

We lounged around the hotel for a little while, resting, checking TV and internet, showering... and eventually got around to dinner. We decided to go to McDonald's in order to save some money for our next stop- the Hard Rock Cafe.

Hard rock Cafe was great, we had a delicious chocolate fudge brownie topped with ice cream, whipped cream and a cherry on top, I had a strawberry daiquiri and Matt had a Hungarian beer. We spent some time there enjoying the food, drinks and music, took some photos of the memorabilia on the walls and eventually took the Metro back home to get some sleep.