Budapest!

Hello all! We are back from Budapest now and finally finished resting! We left early Wednesday morning and got back at 5 a.m. Friday. We had an absolutely amazing time! We didn't go there for missions or anything, just a short fun and relaxing trip because it was so cheap to get there.

We took a train and for a round trip it cost us about $30! The train ride there was long but we still enjoyed it! When we got there we found an ATM to get Forints (Hungarian currency) and then we found somewhere to eat. We ate a gyro stand on the street. The gyros were so spicy that Cait and I could only eat half of our gyros so Daniel finished his and ours! Then we walked around the city a little and asked a taxi if he could takes us to the apartment. He told us the apartment was just around the corner. It was definitely God intervening because there is no way we would have walked the correct way from the train station and to find something to eat and be so close to the apartment! The apartment cost us $60 total and it was awesome! There were two bedrooms with full sized beds, another twin bed in the living room, a kitchen, and two bathrooms. We were so excited to have something so nice and for so cheap! Were weren't sure what to do next (this was our first time ever being on our own in a foreign country) so we looked up things to do in Budapest. We decided to go to the center of town and look at all the shops and everything they had (this was at 7 p.m. so there wasn't much to sight see). Then we decided to walk across the bridge to the "Buda" side of Budapest. We mainly just walked around and enjoyed the beautiful scenery.

Thursday morning we checked out of the apartment and went to a small cafe for breakfast. Caitlin and I ordered French Toast and Daniel ordered some kind of sausage. When the food arrived, the French toast came without syrup. I took a bite and being the picky eater that I am, I gagged! We asked for some syrup (everyone spoke some English by the way) and  the waitress did not know what syrup was so we asked for honey. After we spread honey on the French toast it was delicious! Daniel also enjoyed his Hungarian sausage.

Then we set out to sight see. First we did a little shopping (Cait and I ARE girls!) and then we went to Buda Castle. We had to choice of paying a trolley like lift or walking up. We are cheap and young, so we walked, and it was quite the hike! The view was absolutely amazing! I really enjoyed how beautiful the architecture was and how you could see almost the entire city! The we walked to St. Mattias church and stopped at some souvenir stands along the way. It started to rain a little but it didn't stop us!

We got to St. Mattias church and we were extremely impressed! The church was magnificent! I've never seen a church so beautiful! We could have payed $8 to go in but we ran out of Forints so we enjoyed the view from the outside. We walked along a little more around the church and the view was incredible there too! We kept walking to look for Fisherman's Bastion but I think we overshot it and we couldn't find it.

It started raining very heavily then so we started to make our way to find some dinner. We didn't really mind the rain but we were so excited to be in Budapest! We got lost a little and walked through some neighborhoods (they were gorgeous!) and finally found the Danube. We then followed the Danube to the bridge and crossed back over the the "Pest" side of Budapest. It was raining to hard to do any more sight seeing so we went to the nicest McDonald's I have ever been to!

Our train was not going to leave until 11:30 p.m. so we hung out there for a while, did a little more shopping, and went to Burger King to hang out (there wasn't anywhere else to go, trust me we would not have chosen McDonald's or Burger King unless we had to!).

We made it to the train station and waited for a train. The train ride home was not near as nice as the train to Budapest. The only seats available we in boxes and there were six of us in a box! But we made it back to Novi Sad safely and soundly and we had an amazing time!

Monday we will leave for South Serbia, where we will be working with a Roma village. We are so excited to be working here and please keep us in your prayers!!

Much love! <3 Bethany