Venice the Menace and getting Hungary

Venice is many things. The city on the water. The city of gondoliers. The city of 80% tourists at any given time. The city where even if you have a map, as soon as you set foot on the main island you are doomed to get lost at some point. All in all, it’s not too bad.

Somehow Blaine and I miraculously found a very cheap hotel right next to the train station. Very fortunate too, because Venice is HOT this time of year, and lugging all that luggage to some far of accommodation would not have been fun. We arrived mid day and had one night in Venice, leaving on the overnight train to Budapest the next day. Naturally, we wanted to explore the city.

Now, I love water. I’ve wanted to go to Venice all my life because the concept of a city on water just blew my mind. After visiting it, I must say it was a little more touristy than I was hoping for. That’s not to say it’s not beautiful, it’s just a little too crowded for my taste.

They have little fast food café/bar type places scattered around the island. We ate at one the first night and I had a spritz (everyone drinks them in Venice…?) and the BEST gnocchi I’ve had in my life. I have a supreme weakness to gnocchi. It is my favorite Italian dish hands down. Unfortunately it’s not too common in the states, and whenever I see it on a menu I HAVE to order it. No question. Venice is known for their gnocchi with pesto, and for good reason. It. Is. Delicious.

Venice being the touristy area it is, is a little pricey. Blaine and I, on our little budget, decided instead of going to the bars and spending horrendous amounts of money could just find a supermarket and get a bottle of Italian wine. Somehow that progressed to 3 liters of what ended up being sparkling red wine called Lambrusco. Three Euros for a 1.5 liter bottle of this stuff was just too good to pass up, so we bought two and sat on the edge of Venice living the Italian dream.

Needless to say, after three liters of Lambrusco, finding your way back home can be a little difficult. I actually don’t even think it was the Lambrusco, Venice is just hard to navigate. I usually pride myself on my direction sense. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s pretty damn good. After walking for a half hour in what Blaine and I could have sworn to be North turned out to be completely East, we were a little disheartened. We ended up winding through the canals of Venice for about an hour and a half till we finally found our way home, going through just about every back alleyway possible. On the plus side, Venice is beautiful at night, you just never really know where you are…

The only way to get to Budapest from Venice was to take the overnight train. We didn’t have the best experience with our previous overnight train because it was a little hot and the beds were uncomfortable, so we knew this one probably wasn’t going to be any better. That being said, when we were faced with the opportunity to just have a regular seat for 5 Euro instead of a bed for 19 Euro, we thought it would be a good idea to tough it out and save the money. Bad idea.

This car was absolutely SMOLDERING. There were six people crammed in this little room on the train, and it honestly felt like a sauna. A sauna with five of the closest friends you’ve never met. Once the train started moving it cooled down a LITTLE bit, but not much at all. This train ride was 13 hours long. My goodness.

Luckily, four hours into the ride everybody in our little room got off at Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia and one of the stops along the way to Budapest. We had been blessed with a vacant room. Miracles don’t last too long though, as two others boarded in Ljubljana (pernounced “Loob-lee-ah-nah” as I found out). We spent the rest of the train ride getting our passports checked (seriously, they checked those things every hour) and trying to find a comfortable way to sleep. We were never successful.

Of course if some place is called “Hungary”, odds are we’re going to get along. Blaine wasn’t too sure what Hungarian food was. I told him it was goulash, but he didn’t believe me. I was right. We found a hostel and went out to get some food, because we were Hungary and didn’t eat anything since before the 13 hour train ride. We found a kebab place and while we were eating it I was so excited to be eating that I didn’t realize I had dripped kebab juice ALL over myself. I won’t be wearing those shorts for the rest of the trip…

We walked around Budapest the whole day, finding some goulash, cheap beer, world cup matches, and the Buda castle. For those that don’t know, Budapest is separated into the west (Buda), and the east (Pest), with the Danube flowing between them. Castle Buda overlooks the Danube and Pest following suit. They had a really fancy restaurant on the ramparts of the castle. It looked like some place you’d take a girl to propose to her. Needless to say, Blaine and I did not eat here.

We somehow did our math wrong earlier in the trip, and as luck would have it we could only stay one night in Budapest, this meant that we had to leave early the next day (my birthday) and spend the day trying to get to Prague. This resulted in having breakfast in Budapest, lunch in Vienna, and dinner in Prague. This brings the grand total of countries I’ve had my birthday in to 8. Not bad.

We made it to Prague fine, but I’ll save that for later. This post is getting too long. So, if you want to know about Prague, you’ll have to Czech back later.