From Budapest to Prague

As I said before, my favorite type of people are the one who is saying „Yes“ whenever you asked them to join you on a trip. Anita is that kind of a person, the one who doesn't miss an opportunity to travel and explore. As you all know, Ena, is in Prague as part of student exchange program. Visiting her was perfect alibi for our little trip. But why only visit Prague when you can go to Budapest too?

It all started two weeks before our departure. Anita and I were on a coffee break, and the idea of going to Prague just popped up, a few clicks later our flight to Budapest was booked, buses from Budapest to Prague and from Prague to Zagreb were bought. Okay, we have tickets, we have good will, but neither of it will provide shelter over the nights, so we went to find the perfect place to stay. Since we both travelled a lot lately, our budget was really low, so we decided to try Couchsurfing. In Budapest we got in touch with the girl from Mostar who was more than willing to let us sleep at her place. But Prague was a bit of a problem. A few days later we got 3 positive responses, and we decided to stick with some girl. But that's a whole another story, let's talk about Budapest first. For both of us this was the shortest flight in our travelling carriers, only 45 minutes. Thank you world for planes. When we arrived it took as a good 45 minutes to find the apartment. Sandra, our host, was amazing, and we felt as home as soon as we stepped our foot into her beautiful home. We took a few minutes of rest and went on an adventure. It is our second time in Budapest, so we wanted to get away from typical touristy places.

Markets are the best places

 We went to market first, there is something about crowded places, especially when there is a lot of tourists. People roaming around, enjoying the view, or enjoying some of the fruits. We found the perfect place, where we could see all of it, enjoy the sounds and view. All the smells around us got us hungry, so we went to a local pasta shop called simply PASTA. 

Past is always a good idea

We were thrilled when we saw the serving of that pasta, as we never had food in a box like that before. And the taste blow us away, easily taking first places of best pastas we had (beating even Italian pastas), and the best part is that it was only around 2€. As we had our meal, talked and talked a bit, we decided to continue our roaming. Anita really wanted to see the statue of liberty, even though it was a long climb up, all of my begging not to go, and enjoy it from the nice view from streets didn't help. As we were heading to the climb, Anita suddenly stopped, her eyes were focused on a guy sitting on a bench waiting for the bus. The world is huge, but not huge enough. We were in Budapest, and Anita was hugging this guy from Azerbaijan, who was in Mostar for some AIESEC thing. That small reunion resulted in plans for going out that night. The next thing I was trying to catch my breath as we were climbing. But to be honest all of that climb was worth a way, the view from up there is magnificent. And all of you who want to see it, please climb, don't use buses, trust me, it's worth it ( see Anita, I admitted it). We enjoyed a perfect moment there, finally breathing as we were supposed to. I was lost in the city when Anita pointed the screen of her camera in my face, fangirling over the photo she just took. I have seen a lot of her photos, so I was kind of ready to see something beautiful. But that photo left me speechless. She captured a couple sharing their love infront of this magnificent city. It took me a few minutes and a few not so gentle pushes to get her into talking to them and showing them her photos. 

Love is in the air

The couple was also blown away with photos, and they left a really nice comment about it on their Facebook pages. I really wish I could describe to you how happy Anita was, and that is what all of this is about, sharing moments and love. We continued our walk to the old city core, day turned into night, lights were on, and we were party of fairy side of Budapest. We got to the Fisherman's house, and we went speechless, no words were coming out of our mouths. We were just staring, trying to soak in this magnificent view. The lan was to stay there for half an hour, but as we found some chairs, it turned out to be an hour and half of dead silence. As we got tired, and our eyes started closing, we decided to go back home, and continue our journey tomorrow. 

Look at the way the lighted it

The second day was pretty much touristic, which means buying souvenirs and stuff for friends and family, probably our least favorite part of the trips. The rest of the day we spend walking around the city and drinking coffee, just trying to get some rest and energy for that night. It was our first time using Flixbus, and seeing those seats got us so happy. They were so comfy, and the space you had for yourself was something new for us. Usually we hate bus rides, but this one was so easy, we didn't get tired, as we were able to sleep a lot. Plus free Wi-Fi, and charging ports. Flixbus, we salute you. Sometimes early in the morning we reached Prague, were another adventure was waiting for us.  The first that the greet us in Prague was cold. Being so tired didn't help the feeling. The second thing was this big smile, warm hug and really loud squeal from Ena. As we haven't seen each other for 3 months, all of us started jumping and screaming. Suddenly, the cold didn't bother me anymore, I was in Prague with my amazing travel buddies, and anything and everything was possible.

Reunion of colorful heads

We went to Ena's dorm, to rest a bit before day 1. It took us a bit to get there, as we took the metro. There is something about metros, you don't get to see much of the city, but you do get to see local people, which is a whole another experience. Some of them were in a hurry, some of them were trying to wake up with their morning coffee, and some of them just lost their battle with sleep. Our room  in the dorm was really nice, with a bed for each one of us. We managed to get some time to sleep, before Ena tried to break our door. Our first day was more of a chill day,we decided to go to the ZOO and just chill through the day. Our partner in this adventure was a crazy Russian named Vlad, who made visit to the ZOO even better. 

Finding our way in the jungle

We all had some animals we really wanted to see, so we just went to see them, as we didn't have much time, since we had Bachata class later that day. Yeah, we danced Bachata in Prague. It's part of Dance for water organisation, and it was Anita's and my first time doing it, and to be honest we loved it. At first it was really hard for us to dance with different men, and some of them were old enough to be our fathers. But with some time, we got out of our comfort zone and we were just having fun. Two hours was not enough, and we felt really bad for not being able to go next week. We continued our night at a La loca bar in Mosaic House. Lucky for us it was karaoke night, and no we didn't sing, luckily for other people. We had some beer, danced some more, and sing out of tune to some old hits. Our legs were giving up on us, so we had to give up and go to sleep, not knowing what tomorrow brings. Day 2 first we went to Letna park, we were in need for some nature, but the view from Hanavsky Pavilion in Letna Park was so perfect we just had to stay there for a coffee. 

This view is priceless (Hanavsky Pavilion in Letna Park)

Caption (Mostar girls in Prague)

Which of course inspired us for shooting a dance video, which you can see on Soon feed instagram, or just search hashtag TheEuropeSong. Day 2 was also full of surprises, remember how I told you that we were ready for our first Couchsurfing experience? Well, we weren't ready for this. Our first stop of the day was Lennone's wall, we are the dreamers and we are not the only one. The place was crowded with people trying to get a photo, and go away without even taking a second to admire the colors and messages on the wall. 

Anita the Wise

Ofc he is singing Wonderwall

We took some photos, commented on some stuff on the wall, and were ready to go see Carl's bridge, when Ena received a message from our Couchsurfer host, saying that she can't host us, an hour and half before we were supposed to meet with her. Okay. What now? No room for panic or stress, let's just go with this, go with the flow. Our stuff were at Ena's dorm, so we have no problems with carrying tons of bags with us, which is good. So the next step for us was to figure out where to sleep. And we decided not to sleep at all. We spent the night on the streets of Prague. First, we went to club Roxy, to some party, which was okay, nothing more, nothing less, just okay. After that we went to our own after party. Ena's friend Oana joined us, a true angel on Earth, who let us sleep the next day at her place. We owe you big time! We grabbed some burritos and went to Letna park. We did some climbing until we reached metronome, but it was so worth it. If you are in Prague, go there by night, it's something special. We spent the rest of the night there, sharing burritos, beers and laughs. Sun has been already up, we were cold and getting hungry again, so we said our goodbyes and went back to Ena's dorm to have a shower, and luckily her roommate wasn't there, so we will be able to sleep a bit. The third day was a bit slower, which is normal, since we had pretty crazy day before. We went to Shakespears library, which is the perfect place for every bookworm. So if you love books, and you want to get it at cheap price, go to Shakespears library. 

Anita is super excited

Such a lovely place

We enjoyed books some more, and went to The Senat garden, and had few problems with security guards who didn't let us feed the ducks, but joke on them, we went to the lake and fed another swans. The Senat garden is a beautiful place, with small labyrinth in the middle, but the most special part of it is The Grotto (Dripstone Wall), mix of beautiful and bizarre, spectacular and dark. It will make you stare at it until you find every face that's hidden there. 

After this we went to the lake to feed some swans, and to try to get Anita over hear the fear of beautiful swans. Her adventures with these birds made a lot of other tourists laugh. 

Chillin-killin

 And if you wonder if we ate anything while we were there, yes, we did, but the only place that was worth mentioning is Česka Kuchyne, they have an interesting way of paying for food, and the food is traditional Czech food, everything is fresh and tasteful, prices aren't so high, we recommend this place for lunch. After lunch we met with Oana, and went for a beer, first we went to Vzorkovna. That place is love. The atmosphere and people, it's amazing. They also have a great way of paying, as you give as much money as you want, you receive bracelet with pendant, that hey scan whenever you buy drinks or food, the money you didn't spend will be given back at the exit. 

Local bend at Vzorkovna

We had a few beers there and went to Prague Beer Museum, where we tried different beers. So if you want to try many kinds of beers for not a lot of money go to Prague Beer Museum in Old town. You can order 10 different beers for as i recall 10€. Beer got us dead, so we went to Oana's place to go to sleep. We had one more day in Prague, and our energy level was gone. Our last day was made of shopping, and trying to stay away from the rain. The best place for that is Hamleys, huge toy store with three floors. I don't care that I'm 22, I'm sliding that slide from third floor to first floor. I felt like Kevin McCallister in Home Alone 2. I was running from one part of store to another one, while Anita was explaining to everyone how she is Merida the brave. That’s when homesickness kicked in, and we build The Old bridge from Legos. We went to Naše Maso, as we saw that that’s the place to go to if you want a burger. Anita and I went with sausages, but Ena stuck with burger, which was so raw the blood was still coming out of it. So if you decide to go to Naše Maso, go with something else, not sausages. 

Baaaad

Gooooood

We chilled some more before our bus to Zagreb. To be honest, we expected this trip to be great, but it was better than we could ever imagine it to be. We experienced Prague to the fullest, and we went back home without regrets. 

Prague will always be one of our favorite memories