Day 5, July 25th. Budapest, Hungary

I SLEPT TIL 7:30!!!!! Hooray!!!!!! The bad part about that, we had to leave for Budapest at 7:45, lol. Yikes. Oh well, for the most part, I was ready to roll. But in the hurry to get my things together, came the 1st tragedy of the journey. The big, BRAND NEW, Sony SLR camera that I bought a couple of months ago, slipped between the arms of 2 chairs, fell a VERY short distance and inevitably, cracked the LCD display. I didn't figure it out until I was trying to take pictures out the window while riding to Budapest, and I have to be honest, several curse words were exclaimed. The camera itself still works great, but I can't review pictures, can't use the option of the fold out screen to take pictures over my head, can't tell how many pictures I've taken OR how many I can still take and can't change any of the setting on the camera unless I look at the info that shows up in the view finder. Thank goodness it has a view finder and thank goodness I had a film SLR camera for years, I am still capable of shooting pictures with out the instant gratification of seeing the shot for 2 seconds after, it just means, I have to take MORE. LOL. I'm still pretty upset about it, but I don't really think there is much I can do about it here in Hungary, so all I can do is make the best of it. Frick.

Nick was kind enough to take me past the Hungarioring on the way to BP to exchange my F1 ticket voucher for the actual ticket. I'm so glad I did too, Sunday this place will be a nightmare for this kind of thing. And as I type this blog, I'm not even sure how easy it would have been to exchange my ticket if I hadn't had Nick to drive me right to it. What a blessing! Everything just keeps falling into place. It was SO exciting to see the track and all the fans going to see qualifying today, I feel like this is my 1st F1 race ever!!! It's indescribable the exact feelings I have, but tomorrow is going to me magnificent! This actually almost made up for the camera thing, until I thought about it again and realized it's going to be difficult tomorrow to know if I got good shots, uggg.

We got into Budapest a little bit early, so Nick showed me around a tiny bit and gave me a little bit of a Hungarian History lesson. We then went to the airport to pick up some people for Nick's English camp and added 2 people from Syracuse, NY to the history lesson. We went down to the Danube River and looked at the 2nd largest Parliament building in Europe, 1st largest is in London. But after walking around for a short while, I was dropped off at the Baniki Hostel downtown Budapest. Nick and I parted ways here and he headed back to pick up another round of Americans at the airport and onward back to Egar.

Thank you to Nick and Rosemary (and Nate and Balaze) for their hospitality!!! I had a wonderful time and I'm starting to think I'm kinda crazy for doing the rest of this trip alone, but there is no turning back now! lol I hope your English Camp goes well. Please tell everyone that I met, that I they all made my trip to Egar memorable, esp the Australians,

So, I found out I made a bad decision on hostels. The advertisement said, sheet & towels were included in price and free WiFi. Not exactly.... sheets yes, no towels, good thing I brought my own. Free WiFi.... at McDonald's, 3 blocks away. Oh well, what can ya do? The McDonald's I mentioned, it is so ridiculous!!! It has to be the most dynamic McD's in the world. It's 3 levels, chandeliers, intricate molding detail (I think it was once part of the train station) and they stopped me from taking pictures. Oh I'll get one, you can count on it!

After some him'n and hawing about what to do, I decided to go visit the Castle on the Buda side of the Danube river, did you know that Budapest is really broken up into Buda on one side and Pest on the other. I had to take the Metro and a Bus, but it was worth every moment! I got some great shots of the city and the famous bridge at dusk and in the dark. Then I made my way back, there sure are a lot of F1 fans here, lol, it's awesome. By 10 pm I was ready for dinner, Lamb medallions w/ a buttery pesto sauce, mushrooms and mashed potatoes! Yummy! Gin is served as a shot, so I had that and a glass of Cherry Iced tea, different but good. Made it to bed around 12:30.... so excited about the F1 race tomorrow!