Safe and sound, and back from Spain and Hungary

Much has happened since my last post 2 weeks ago and during our long and adventurous trip, but I will try and keep it as brief as possible.

We spent our day in Barcelona at Park Güell, a champagne bar, and going up Montjuïc in a cable car. It was a very nice and busy city filled with street vendors and our hostel was awesome. On the 22nd, we went to pick up our rental car. That proved to be a bit difficult and we ended up with a van for seven people instead of two cars. It ended up being a better situation since we could all stick together more easily, however, Courtney had to spend the whole trip squished between two seats sitting on her belongings. Haha.

Upon arriving in Valencia, we saw the local area including a cathedral that claims to posess the last cup. We also visited a very nice local park and the beach. The 32nd America's Cup was also in the preliminary stages and we got to see some of the footage and boats. On the 23rd, we visited the Alhambra in Granada and on the 24th, we visited the Mezquita in Cordoba and arrived in Sevilla that evening where we went to the Feria that night. We spent the day looking around Sevilla before catching our flight to London Stansted airport in which we spent the night.

Charles and I caught our flight the next morning, April 26th, to Balaton, Hungary. We both got our passports heavily inspected as, we figured, they do not see very many from the North America. They looked at every single page and felt the paper and seams. We took a van to Révfülöp where our hostel was located and, on the way, saw a horse drawn carriage and a refrigerator strapped to a car roof. It did not take very long to notice that we were in a completely different country. Révfülöp was a very small tourist town on the Lake, but it was very nice nonetheless. We trekked up to the viewing tower that was built in 2000 and got a very nice view of Lake Balaton, which is, at 592 km², the largest lake in central Europe. It is so large is is often referred to as the Hungarian sea.

We took a train the next day to Budapest where we stayed until May 1st, at which point we met back up with everyone else, who either stayed in Spain, London, or Sweden, at Stansted for our flight back to Poitiers. We were able to see very many sights in Budapest and too be completely honest, I enjoyed it even more than Paris. There are many thinks to see and do and we were very occupied for our entire stay. One of the things I enjoyed best was on our last day, April 30th, when I went to Széchenyi Medicinal Bath, the largest medicinal bath in Europe. It was very relaxing.

Our stay in Hungary was very cheap. One euro equals roughly 250 Hungarian forints and we lived like kings. Our meals were all under 10€ and our hostel was only 8€ per night.

Only one month left in France and then back home, so I will be trying to make the best of my time left. I am still planning a trip to Vimy Ridge as well as London and Ireland.

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1001 Day Challenge:

#46: This goal became less important when Emilio, a friend of ours at ESCEM from Mexico, joined our trip to Spain. However, I feel like I picked up a fair amount of Spanish before and on our trip from him, audio lessons, and a phrase book.

#72: We spent about 4 of our days driving across Spain.

#85: Sent a total of five postcards.