Our journey to Vienna was easy an uneventful one, leaving us with just under 24 hours to take in all we could from the city. The first highlight (for Ryan, that is) was that our Airbnb host had a little dog running around the apartment. After Ryan got his fill of hanging out with his new bff, we headed out to grab lunch at a cafe recommended by our host. Finally seeing pasta dishes within our budget, we pounced at the opportunity. What we did not expect was that the portion sizes would be massive, leaving us bursting at the seams from our food.

After attempting a speedy recovery, we started to explore the city – finding more often than not that the sights we wished to see were wrapped up in scaffolding and rather disappointing. After walking around a bit, it began to drizzle lightly, so we decided to stop at a bar Becca had found in her research of Vienna. Enjoying some great beers, we watched in awe as the skies opened up into a massive thunderstorm, dumping gallons of rain just outside the cover we were under. Thankful to be dry, we bided our time at the bar and hoped than the rain would die down sooner rather than later.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, the rain lessened to a more bearable level, and we resumed our exploration of the city. It was late before we knew it, and our brief time to explore Vienna was up.

Rising early the next morning, we headed off to Budapest. We could not have been happier with our accomodations when we got there. We were located centrally in the Jewish district, surrounded by great restaurants and bars. Despite being in the middle of things, our Airbnb was nestled into the middle of a very quiet apartment complex, eliminating 100% of the street noise!

We quickly took advantage of this amazing location, crossing our street to grab lunch at a great Thai place. After filling our bellies we walked to a park that Ryan suggested after seeing it on a map. When we arrived we were underwhelmed. The park was under serious construction that prevented us from using most of it. However, we kept walking through it until we stumbled on some beautiful architecture! What we did not realize was that the park was home to Heroes Square, one of the major must sees of Budapest. We have a knack for accidentally wandering into sights that we read about in guide books.

After exploring the square and taking in the sights, we walked back along Andrassy Avenue (another accident) and by the House of Terror. We checked the ticket prices, but decided to come back another day. We continued wandering, stumbling on more churches before finding ourselves at the Chain Bridge. We had seen in the weather forecast that there was supposed to be “wind”, but had only been faced with mild gusts. However, walking out onto the bridge, we were battered by some very strong winds, feeling the full force of them out over the water. Our efforts to take photos turned out like this:

We topped off our night with a visit to Szimpla Kert, a famous “ruin pub” that happened to be a few doors down from our airbnb. The pub is more of a maze, filled with dozens of rooms and multiple types of bars scattered throughout. The decor is really wacky and the whole vibe is fun. We went on a Wednesday night at about 9:30 PM and the place was pretty full – and we had real trouble finding seats, only snagging a table in the very last room. We can’t imagine what it is like this weekend!

The next day we started by walking to the Parliment building, a stunning castle-like complex next to the river. Then we walked up the river and across a bridge to a place called Margaret Island. We wandered through the gardens, spending most of our time in a nice Japanese garden with lots of turtles and baby ducklings sunbathing.

After walking across the entire island, we made our way to one of Becca’s friend’s recommendations – the best gelato place in Budapest. Unfortunately for us, this particular gelato stand happended to be about 45 minutes away on the wrong side of the river from home. Becca is still not sure that it was the right “best gelato place” because it was so far out of the way, but we made the trek, and the gelato was delicious (and 79 cents)!

It took over an hour to get back (and we had to walk on a tiny strip of gravel next to a busy street), but we made it! We had an amazing dinner on our street again before heading out to watch the sunset by the water and see the Shoes on the Danube Memorial.

Our final day we woke up early to go to the Szechenyi Thermal Baths before they got too overrun with other tourists. The bath complex holds outdoor baths, indoor baths of varying temperatures, saunas, and rooms for treatments such as facials or massages. We spent the majority of our time in the outdoor baths, but also spent some time moving between the saunas and the really cold pools. It was a challenge, but we had fun trying to convince ourselves to get back in the frigid water!

The whole experience was so relaxing and fun! We stayed for about three hours, only leaving when the entire place got completely filled to the brim with tourists. We headed home to grab lunch, before quickly heading back out so that we wouldn’t succomb to the urge to nap. We went to the House of Terror, taking our time to make our way through the very heavy museum. The basement was particularly moving, containing many of the cells, gallows and torture rooms that had been in use only a few decades ago.

Unsure of how to follow up such an experience, we slowly made our way home while absorbing what we had seen. Wanting something easy for dinner, we headed to a nearby grouping of food trucks down our street, getting our fill of comfort food and attempting to use up the rest of our cash (Hungary is not on the Euro). We went to sleep early as our train left the station at 6:30 AM the next morning.

We woke up at 5 this morning (not sure how we are still awake writing this post!) to get on a train to Zagreb, Croatia. We decided on this train because it was one of two direct trains of the day, with the other train arriving in Zagreb after 9 PM (so about now)! The journey was a little over 6 hours and we wanted to make sure we had the direct trip so that it wasn’t even longer (the indirect train would take closer to 9 hours).

Only the 3rd or 4th time we had reserved seats for a train, we showed up to find that our seats did not have any indication that they were reserved. This train was a little more low tech than we were used to. We settled into our seats and started the long journey. The train had 35 stops between Budapest and Zagreb, making the trek extremely slow going. To put this in perspective, on all the trains we’ve had up to this point we’ve maybe had 35 stops total. As the hours wore on, the train became warmer and warmer and soon we were dripping sweat with no way to get any air flow.

After about 3 hours we finally reached the border of Croatia and had our passports checked for the first time since we left London almost 5 weeks ago (since we left the Schengen Area to get here). It took about 45 mins as we had to get checked and stamped by both the Hungarian and Croatian border patrol.

As we finally got going towards our first stop on the Croatian side of the border an announcement was played over the speakers: “Please pay attention, at the next station we change the train”. We were very confused by the message, but there was no follow up besides the same message being played two or three times more.

When we arrived at the next station everyone started flooding off of the train. We looked at each other and realized that the message must have really meant that we needed to change trains (so much for our direct journey that we booked). We grabbed our stuff and barely made it to the other unmarked train before it left the station, leaving many confused people behind. We barely found seats because the new train was much smaller than the old train. The only benefit to switching trains was that there was air conditioning on this one!!

When we got to the next stop we could confirm that we were on the right train that was going to Zagreb still! We were so relieved, while still very confused why we had to switch trains (we mused that maybe it was because of the broken airconditioning).

After only three more stops the same pre recorded voice came over the speakers again: “Please pay attention, at the next station we cross the bus”. We were horrified. We thought it was a sick joke and also had no idea what that could mean. But at the next station, again everyone stood up and got off of the train. We rounded the corner of the station to find: CHARTER BUSSES! I’m not joking.

There were three randomly branded and colored busses waiting for us. While we were very confused and not totally sure that we should get on random busses at a strange train station in the Croatian countryside, we realized that three busses would not fit all of the people from the train so we quickly loaded our things and got on the bus.

We started off on the freeway and heard a group of girls in the back of the bus, as bewildered as us, making jokes about what might happen next in this saga. “Please pay attention, at the next station we cross to bike” or “Please pay attention, at the next station we cross to tractor”. It made us laugh at our ridiculous situation.

We were commenting that we would probably never know why we had to do all of this, when a friendly Croatian man explained it to us. What we think happened is that the first train change was because we needed to change to a Croatian train after crossing the border. The next change to a bus was because there was construction work taking place on the train tracks which we had to avoid. Our bus drove us around the construction and we got on a third train… yes a third train!

We did make it to Zagreb in one piece, with all of our luggage, and our good spirits intact. When we woke up at 5 AM we could not have anticipated what we had in store today!