Bathing in Budapest

Hey everyone,
Sorry it's been so long since I've written... but I'll start from Prague because I'll forget mostly everything before then... but if you're curious, you can read about it in Erics blog.

We spent a few days in Prague, and it was definitly the most stunning city I'd been to yet. Everything about it is big and impressive, including the kabillions of tourists infesting every last inch of it! I managed to get around this slightly by waking up ridiculously early and heading straight to the castle to take advantage of a few hours of peace there. I even got all artistic and took a sketch pad and pencils and attempted to draw a landscape of the city from the top of a wall... until I realized that every tour group that passed would hover over my shoulder to see what I was doing. Needless to say, it was embarassing and I'm shy so I quickly gave up. I think the best part of Prague was that we discovered how absolutely amazing Czech food is. My mouth waters just remembering it! And if you just took a few streets away from the tourist streets you could find really great and cheap local pubs with really great and cheap beer. Mmmmmmmm .5 litres of Pilser Urquell for less than .2 litres of coke.

Straight after Prague we headed to Pilsn to tour the most famous brewery in the world. Eric's idea, not mine, but it was still fun, and I have to admit that I'm hooked on it. We got to taste it fresh from the cellars and everything. Those pictures should probably be up fairly soon, they're in the next batch anyways!

We then headed to Cesky Krumluv, a tiny little touristy town south of Prague, where we spent a couple days relaxing, eating good food and drinking good beer and floating circles around the town in inner tubes - down waterslides and little rapids... FUN!

Next stop was Bratislava, Slovakia. We stayed in a very hippieish hostel with a big statue of Lenin on the wall, and posters of Bob Marley everywhere. We saw Devin castle, on the Danube, which was really stunning, and then wandered around the old town. It was a smaller and less touristy city than the last we've been to, which was nice, but otherwise, it doesn't compare to...... Budapest!!!! Which is where we are now.

Budapest is phenominal so far. I really really like it. There's an air race going on this weekend, so we get to watch planes racing really low to the ground along the Danube river, going under bridges and through big balloon pilon things. So far they've just been practicing, but tomorrow is the big race, so we're going to try to find a good shady spot nice and early on to watch it from. The other highlight so far are the baths. We spent the best part of the afternoon today soaking in thermal outdoor baths surrounded by a beautiful building. You can go inside and explore through tons of different rooms full of saunas and steamrooms and hot and cold baths. It's really beautiful and relaxing, I think I'll sleep well tonight.

So that's all for now, if you want to read more, again, Eric's blog is probably much more detailed.. so go see it!

Love and miss everyone lots!!!!!