Rome (June 1st - June 4th)

The road to Rome was a long one. We took a 14 hour overnight train from Budapest to Venice in a cramped and musty 6 passenger cattle cabin, and from there we still had to take another three hour train to Rome, albeit this train was an Italian “ave” which was quite comfortable, quiet, and impressively nimble. We weary travelers set foot in Roma’s Termini station around lunchtime, and after a short metro ride emerged to be greeted by the sun’s warm rays. The hostel was a short walk from there, and we dropped our bags and immediately went to get a couple of slices of pizza as we were starving, not having eaten since the previous night.

We then spent the most of this lovely Tuesday strolling the streets of Rome, only stopping occasionally for pizza or a Panini to sustain us. Our hostel was located between the Vatican and Piazza del Popolo, so we first went towards the Piazza and the center of the city, putting off the Vatican for the next day. We walked through the Piazza and took in its amazing buildings and the obelisk in the middle (I was jaded to this square, knowing that there were many others which are just as impressive, but Allie loved it). From the Piazza we walked uphill to a park which surrounds the Villa Medici to get our first aerial view of the city. A pathway through the park past delicious and rich smelling white flowers (the name of which we really want to know) took us to the Spanish Steps. If I remember correctly by this point Allie was already saying that she wants to learn how to speak Italian. It wasn’t surprising, as the smells of flowers and pizza, the amazing architecture, the beautiful aerial view of Rome’s sea of domes, and the weather were all quite inviting.

From there we tried to walk down to the Piazza Navona, a spot my Dad, who studied abroad in Rome, recommended going to enjoy a Panini while doing some quality people watching. It was pretty tough to find the Piazza for some reason, but getting lost allowed us to explore some of the older, narrower streets of the city, which were no less beautiful than any others. Finally we reached the Piazza and enjoyed ourselves just as my dad had recommended—until an Italian police officer wagged a finger at us and kicked us off one of the Piazza’s fountains. We moved on and went to Campo del Fiori in hopes of finding an outdoor market for some fruit, but they were closing up shop for the day. We crossed the river to seek out the restaurant where I had taken my cooking class the last time I was in Rome to ensure that we would be able to eat there the following night and to refresh my memory as to where it was. After this, we walked up a neverending hill to get what is probably the best aerial view of the city from the Terraza di Roma as the sun was setting. Exhausted, we sauntered down and got our first gelato, something which I think Allie was especially excited for. We made our way back to the hostel, chatted with some of our Canadian, American, and Australian roomates and called it a night.

The following morning we arose relatively early and walked towards the Vatican, knowing that the Pope makes an appearance on Wednesdays at 11. At 9:45 only a small crowd had gathered and we were starving, so we walked a few blocks away from the Basilica in order to avoid getting fleeced and got a couple of nice pastries and cappuccinos at a nearby café—the same one where we’d gotten gelato the previous night. We quickly became attached to the extremely goofy but very friendly guy who worked there, and when they let me use the vile bathroom which seemed to be reserved for employees, I was sold. We’d get cappuccinos and croissants there each of our three mornings in Rome, and would get gelato two of the three nights. By the last day, our waiter even knew which table we’d sit at.

Back at San Pietro’s, the Pope and his entourage we’re taking the stage. The crowd was much less than I had expected, but it was still pretty cool to see someone as important as the Pope. We saw him, but since we couldn’t so much understand Latin, we stayed for a little while and then left the blistering heat of the square. On the way back I thought we’d stop through again at Campo del Fiori to see the outdoor market, as I’ve always heard about how nice Italian markets are, but again we were foiled, no market. It turns out that Wednesday was a bank holiday.Luckily this was not much of a loss, as the lack of a market afforded the presence of several musicians performing for patrons of the outdoor cafes which line the square. Allie and I didn’t go to a café, but sat on the monument in the middle and took in some of the best free musicians we’d heard on our trip so far. We were so impressed that we gave one of the groups 20 euro cents. From there we wandered towards the ancient city to take a peek at the ruins of the Roman forum and at the Colosseum. Along the way I gave Allie tidbits of what I remembered from the tour I took of these sites two months prior. I told her to consult “Gladiator” for further information. Before we knew it late afternoon was upon us, and it was time to head back to the hostel to freshen up and mentally prepare for our splurge—a proper Italian meal.

We went to Le Fate, a restaurant in a residential area of Rome a pretty good walk from the center and our hostel. At this restaurant I took a cooking class in March, so I knew that the food would be phenomenal for fairly reasonable prices. The restaurant is run by a family which has lived in this neighborhood of Rome for a fairly long time and which takes considerable pride in preserving the local culinary customs. For example, their saltimbocca, which Allie would say during the meal might be the best thing she had ever eaten, is made with beef instead of the veal that most Americans would probably be used to. This is because Trastevere was historically a poorer neighborhood of Rome, and for someone who is poor it simply is not practical to eat veal.History aside, our meal was phenomenal. The typical Italian meal comes in four courses; an appetizer, primi (a pasta dish), secondi (meat or fish), and a dessert. We began by sharing some delicious fresh prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella. Next, I got fettucini alla carbonara—the same dish I’d prepared two months earlier (I couldn’t resist getting it again), while Allie got a very nice spinach Gnocchi with speck, a meat much like prosciutto. She said that might have been the best thing she’d eaten until it was outdone by the Saltimbocca which followed for both of us. I was thinking of getting something else as I’d already made the Saltimbocca and as Allie was going to get it, but when another person at the restaurant who seemed to be chaperoning a group of American students stood up and advised them that this would be the best Saltimbocca they’d ever have we both felt compelled to get it. The only slight disappointment was Allie’s dessert, a chocolate soufflé which was very good but short of incredible. My tiramisu made up for it though, and she stole a few bites to compensate. They showed us great hospitality throughout the meal and topped it off with complimentary limoncello to cleanse our palates. About three hours later we emerged and slowly waked along the river, which beautifully reflected many of its neighboring buildings and bridges, and slept soundly at our hostel.

The next day began with us once again going to our neighborhood café for breakfast. We then went back to the Basilica San Pietro so that Allie could see the inside of it, as the Pope had prevented our doing so the previous day. We had already seen a few churches, popping in and out of them along our walks to take a break from the heat, but none in Rome are grander than the Basilica. We walked in, and after getting a surprisingly direct view of Michelangelo’s Pieta, we were shepherded into the sides of the Basilica as something exciting was about to happen. Some ceremony took place where many members of the clergy walked through the center of the building shrouded in probably hundreds of dollars worth of incense. We couldn’t get a good answer as to what the name of the ceremony was, but it was pretty cool, and the best part was that it smelled really good. The only downside was that each of us got elbowed in the face about four times by people who were really anxious to take pictures and videos of it all. I had to have a chuckle at the irony of this very orderly and solemn ceremony surrounded on both sides by hoards of voracious tourists physically abusing each other to take a picture of a bunch of priests and a storm of incense while simultaneously looking around wide-eyed with questioning looks as to what the meaning of this ceremony actually was. After it was over we took in a bit more of the place and moved on to avoid any broken toes.

We headed back to the city center and went to Campo del Fiori again, and lo and behold there was a market. It wasn’t as impressive as I’d hoped, but we were able to pick up some nice pasta and this eggplant sauce to make for dinner that night. Unfortunately the meal was not quite as good as we’d expected, it suffered from too much pasta and not enough sauce, but we did what we could. We spent the rest of the day taking care of some administrative matters. Getting stamps was difficult as for some reason they did not sell them at the post office, but it was hard to understand that we needed to go to a Tabacco shop—when they said “Tabacchi shop” we heard “to the back of the shop.” So that took a little while. Next we walked to the train station, and though we were a bit worried that it would be sold out, got a train reservation to the Cinque Terre for the next day. At the end of a tiring day we took the metro back to the hostel and relaxed before making our failed dinner, which was not a complete failure, as we still had some cheap wine and a very pleasant Aussie couple to talk to who was in the midst of seven months of travel. Around 9:30 we headed back to our café for a final gelato in Rome, and shortly after we called it a night.

The next morning we woke up early, tidied our bags and headed to our café for one final cappuccino and some croissants with nutella. We unassumingly left with no indication to our waiter that we might never be back, walked down a couple blocks to the Vatican for a couple of postcards and one final view, went back to the hostel and grabbed our bags, took the metro to the train station, waited, and finally got on the train to the Cinque Terre. I ran to an ATM to grab some cash while Allie was on the train, where she got to see a pretty disgusting display of racism from some Americans, but that’s her story to tell. For now, we had to say goodbye to Rome, which was not so easy for us to do, but we quelled our sadness with vows to return and started to get excited for our next destination.

Budapest (May 30st - May 31st)

We chose Budapest as our next destination because we wanted to try somewhere very different and somewhere we knew very little about. However, we only spent one night there, didn’t have much luck weather-wise (it stormed our first day there), decided to exchange only 20 dollars for the two of us (we lived off 20 dollars for two days), and I wasn’t feeling so well (probably as a result of our overnight train the night before) – consequently, our options in Budapest were a bit limited….It was good to try somewhere different though, and we made the most of the time we had despite the circumstances.

We got to the Budapest train station at 9am Sunday morning after a long overnight train ride from Munich. We arrived with no place to stay, hoping to walk around and find a cheap hostel somewhere nearby. We didn’t anticipate feeling as sleep-deprived and dirty as we did though, so we kind of lucked out when a middle-aged woman came up to us as we stepped off the train offering us a room in a flat. We were a bit hesitant at first (maybe this lady was crazy, maybe we were about to get ripped off, maybe she was going to lead us into a dark alley somewhere and her flat didn’t really exist…anything was possible). Nonetheless, we accepted her offer and were relieved that we didn’t have to go hostel-hunting after a long night of traveling.

This lady (we don’t know her name) had us follow her onto a local bus and led us to the flat. Fortunately, the flat did indeed exist and it was actually pretty nice. We were given a large room with tall ceilings and a fairly comfortable bed. There were also huge windows, so the room was bright and airy and there was a bathroom right across the hall. It worked out very nicely. I don’t think we would have found anything this good (and this quickly) for 12 dollars each if we had ended up searching for something ourselves. The lady didn’t ask for our names or passports, she simply handed us our set of keys and took off to go look for a present for her son. Apparently, the day we arrived in Budapest was on Children’s Day, so she needed to find a gift for her son. We only have Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, but according to the lady, Children’s Day is a very important day there. She said if we roamed the streets, we’d be sure to find many Children’s Day festivities, such as free concerts with free food. The idea of free food obviously excited us. Unfortunately, we found no evidence of Children’s Day anywhere in Budapest.

After the lady left to search for Children’s Day presents, Tim and I took our heavy loads off our backs, settled into our flat, and both took much-needed showers. Once freshened up, we made our way into the city…

We weren’t sure what to expect, as neither one of us knew a thing about Budapest prior to our arrival, but the city was pretty nice. We spent the first day just walking around and taking it all in. We walked to St. Stephen’s Basilica (Budapest’s largest church). We walked in the back entrance and got a peak, but the mass that was taking place prevented us from further exploring. We also got a nice view of the Great Synagogue (the largest synagogue in Europe and the second largest in the world) in one of Budapest’s districts known as Pest. This Great Synagogue was designed to hold 3000 worshippers and it also holds a Holocaust memorial (the metal Tree of Life). After St. Stephen’s Basilica, we reached the city’s castle district. We walked along the castle district’s windy cobble-stoned streets atop a big hill, which gave us a great view of the city. The castles were pretty cool, as you can see in the pictures. Many other tourists thought so as well, for even the storm that started soon after we arrived at the castles didn’t stop the tour groups from walking around the castles and taking their photographs.

Tim and I, however, weren’t as bold as some of the other tourists and made our goal to stay somewhat dry (maybe because we weren’t going to be doing laundry for another four weeks or so and didn’t want our clothes to be even more mildewy). In order to avoid the storm, we kept ourselves dry underneath one of the castles overhang, eating some spoonfulls of Nutella and people-watching to pass the time. The storm slowed down a bit and then we headed back to our flat to get dry and take a nap (we were still a bit sleep deprived from our lack of sleep on the overnight train the night before). Once we caught up on sleep, we decided to go find a cheap restaurant where we could sample a typical Hungarian dish.

We ended up at a café not too far from our flat. It seemed as though Goulash was a popular dish, so we each got our own bowl. In case you have never heard of it, Goulash (at least the one we tried) is kind of like a tomato soup with vegetables. Okay, so it wasn’t very interesting and wasn’t anything to go out of one’s way for…but we were very hungry and wanted to try something Hungarian, so we went ahead and ordered some. After our Goulash, we called it a night and got a good night of sleep.

The following morning, Tim went to the train station to make our train reservations for Rome while I slept in a bit (he’s such a gentleman). By the time we were done getting ready and packing up our things, the weather was still looking pretty crumby. Rainy, gray, gross…the kind of weather that makes you want to curl up in bed and do nothing. But because we were in Budapest and probably wouldn’t be back there for at least a very long time, we decided we should get out of the flat and do some more exploring. We thought a tour of the synagogue would be very interesting, so we walked over to it to check it out. Unfortunately, it was far too expensive and the 20 dollars were budgeted for ourselves didn’t quite cover it. It seemed as though most historical sites in Budapest cost money to see, so we looked in the guide book and brainstormed things to do that wouldn’t cost money.

We managed to make the most of the dreary, short day we had and headed over to Hero’s square (a big square with some monuments…we aren’t really sure what they were…) and City Park. City Park was pretty nice, but didn’t really compare to any of the parks we had gone to in any of the other cities we had gone to…but, we still had a lovely Nutella sandwich picnic there (however, we left soon after our sandwiches were eaten, as a bird almost pooped on Tim twice). It was time for us to rush back anyhow, as we had to get our belongings together and get to the train station so we could catch our train to Rome.

We got back to the flat, successfully missing out on rain, and packed up our stuff. We grabbed some tasty kebabs for an early dinner and then made our way to the train station.