Productive Day in Budapest

Monday, July 26, 2010
Woke up and had to check out and head for the Haupbahnhof or the train station. We got all packed up, went the grocery store and headed for the train station. We did however, have a most “pleasant” experience at the supermarket. We grabbed all of our items, headed for the cash and got the most awful look of disgust as the cash lady grabbed all of our produce and just walked away from the register. At first we didn’t know what to think until we realized that you have to weigh and price tag all of your own produce before proceeding to the checkout. Oops! She was so angry and was just huffing and puffing the whole time. We apologized but I think it may have gotten lost in translation. Oops. Oh well, we’ll never see her again! Lesson learned, look for weigh scales in the produce section next time. So over to the train station we went and hopped on a really empty train, spread out and were pumped to have all this room in the empty compartment. That is until the conductor came by and said this train had ended and there wouldn’t be a return to Salzburg. So we had to switch trains and luckily the other one wasn’t all that busy either. Through the train ride only a few people sat in our room for short periods of time and we were still able to spread out and be comfortable. Off to Salzburg we go!! We arrived to some really nice weather and a considerable increase in temperature. Needless to say by the time we arrived at our hostel, we were warm and needing a cool off. We wanted to finish the planning we had started in Vienna so we took that evening to do so. We booked our ferries from Athens to Ios and Santorini and back, and also our bus trip from Athens to Corfu to stay at the Pink Palace (sure to be a good time). We also looked into our big splurge of the trip, a villa in Santorini. It was amazing to look for places to stay and where we wanted to be. The views are great and the villas look spectacular. We did narrow it down though and gave it a day to think on and we had emailed a few places to check availability. By now it was nearly 8 and we were quite hungry. There was this badly photocopied menu of some nearby restaurant at reception so we decided to just go there and get some food into us. We arrived at was surely was a shack converted into a restaurant. It had outdoor seating and was a little Thai place. So we stepped up to order and really got one answer. Pad Thai! That was what we could understand from the menu and what the owner working the counter told us to get. So we did and wow it was really good! The cooks were two Thai women and they were fantastic cooks. We really enjoyed it and also tried for the first time Radler beer which has grapefruit mixed in. It was quite refreshing but light in nature. Only 2.5%! Anyhow, we went back to the hostel and got things organized, met our Australian roommate Lydia and called it a night.