Budapest

I shouldn't have to say that I'm going to let the boys talk about Budapest since it's well documented how many times I've posted about my favorite city in Europe and everyone is sick of hearing me go on about it. But while they get their photos of the sights downloaded and ready (aka while they sleep in and play video games and do everything except work on their photos), I'll share snapshots from my phone for a quick overview.
Believe it or not, I didn't take my camera on this trip and while it was liberating to be free of it, the rigors of going everywhere with six people sort of dampened the excitement I felt about walking around camera-free.
Don't get me wrong, larger groups are a lot of fun in the sense that you more or less take the party with you everywhere you go. But the downside is how cumbersome it can be to get tables in cafes, shop in small stores, as well as the difficulty deciding what to do: trying to please the majority while not ignoring the personal bucket lists everyone has.
Since it was the week after the holiday season ended, we were pretty fortunate nothing was really that crowded but we still did our best to anticipate where and when the crowds would be the thickest and alternate our schedules to avoid them. To this end, I made myself unpopular by insisting we all be out of the house and on our way by 10. Although there was some grumbling, the early start made a difference in how many things we were able to accomplish.
However, even with the early start and separating (boys went one way, Mihai and I another) there were things we just didn't have time for like visiting Margitsziget Island, lingering longer in the museums, and getting more than one meeting. (English just switched the weekend meeting from Sunday to Saturday and we arrived in the city on Saturday so we missed it).
None of us felt too badly about it since we reminded ourselves that we need to save something for our next trip!

The lovely house we stayed in.

A little sight-seeing

The house had everything except a washing machine. The lack of washing machines proved to be a challenge for Griffin who had to learn to hand-wash his clothes. I consider it to be an important life skill learned.

At the meeting. We came directly from dinner in the city so we were pretty much a mess of unwashed  sweatshirts but it was kindly overlooked.

Eats and art, some times the same thing

My favorite shop

Sighișoara

I've posted several times about Sighișoara so this time around I feel like it will be more interesting for everyone involved if I just let Griffin and Logan give their thoughts on this mideval citadel city.


Here's what they have to say:

Sighișoara feels a lot smaller than it actually is. For those that don't know it is a city with a fortress in the middle of it. The city is just basic and boring, but the fortress is beautiful. A romanticist's dream city. Most of the shops and cafe's looks like a regular house and has the layout of an average house

to match. We found a really great coffee shop that was just like this. It had great pastries and great coffee. It also had random stuff everywhere that made it look a little like a goodwill for christmas decorations. We guessed it looked like that year round. Inside the fortress, all the paths were cobblestone. It was very nice to look at but not very nice to walk on.
The first day we just walked around Sighișoara, we tried to find all the towers on the fortress wall. The towers was were different occupations would have worked in medieval times. We also found a very aesthetic graveyard. I'm pretty sure I took more pictures of the graveyard then the actual city. As we were walking through the crows and ravens started to caw which made the graveyard feel even more creepy. We also met a very cute puppy who already knew how to make unsuspecting tourists feed him, but the joke was on him because we didn't have any food anyway so we couldn't give any to him even if we wanted too.

I can honestly say I have never stayed in a castle until now. I can also honestly say I have never seen a grown man with a neon green beard in Donald Duck pajamas, blasting some type of EDM through his phone speakers in a decently nice restaurant until now either.

Griffin's photos below:

Here's Logan's take on it:

Sighișoara is a town that makes you feel like you traveled back in time, until you see all of the vendors selling random trinkets on the cobblestone streets. The area we stayed in was the old castle town, which was surrounded by a wall. The rest of the city was outside the walls and looked beautiful from our vantage point in the castle grounds. My favorite part of Sighișoara was the graveyard by the old church because it was an amazing place to take pictures. Like Griffin, I mostly took pictures of the graveyard, because it was such a photogenic place. I took lots of pictures of the crows that were flying about and that were resting in the trees because there were so many of them. The combination of the overcast sky and the crows flying about and making noise resulted in a creepy atmosphere, which I really liked since we were in an old graveyard. I also need to talk about the small puppy that came up to us (more specifically, it came up to Mircea and I, then followed us back to the group), because it was so adorable. It was hard to take pictures of because it was so hyper and constantly was running around. I would say more but Griffin already covered it. I'll probably remember more if anyone asks me about it when I get back to the States.

Logan's photos:

Below are some of Mihai's photos, starting with the hotel we stayed in which is several hundred years old with gloriously creepy floors and a restaurant in the cellar which isn't used in the winter. The restroom is down there but nothing else is (or is there?) you're guaranteed never to pee so fast in your life.