The most exciting week yet…

Buckle in for the adventure!

Monday was a relatively chill day, I cleaned the rest of the room in prep for Jess. I also worked on more sheep content and planning for trips this semester. We went to the canteen for lunch when Flora came back for class. I went to class and afterward we decided to go for a walk. An hour later we made it back to the dorm and were ready for dinner!

The countdown to Jessica’s arrival was on for her Tuesday night arrival! Flora and I went to lunch (they had tostadas which was the first Hispanic food option I have seen here). We grabbed cappuccinos and went to the park to people watch. The fountain in the park was finally on and one of the guys behind us was playing his guitar. It was a very peaceful break and I am excited to see more of the fountains starting up! We came back to the dorm grabbed some sweet treats and worked on homework before our classes. I have a presentation for my language course in two weeks, so we are working on practicing introducing our country (or in my case state). Flora and I met Jessica at the train station here in town at 8 pm and we rode the tram back to the university before coming up with a dinner plan. We decided on a bistro off campus, the food was delicious, and we were able to catch up on some things and make plans for Wednesday.

After letting Jess get some much needed sleep, the three of us wandered over to the canteen for some lunch. After lunch, Jess and I walked down to the city center to grab coffee and a sweet treat. We did some more shopping and were back at the dorm for dinner with Flora. Jess then got to experience our Wednesday tradition of going out with the ESN group. We decided to see Tommy and Eetu at Valhalla a bar next to their apartment for some drinks and snacks and before heading over to Bakelit. We did a round of palinka shots and the bartender looked very concerned for our choice in drink! We headed back to the dorm Thursday morning and got some more sleep.

Thursday was the big day to start our travels! After sleeping in and grabbing lunch at the canteen, Jess and I headed to back to the dorm to pack our bags and relax. I went to my class at 4 pm and then we had some more snacks before heading to our train for Budapest. The train we were in had sleeper cabins and it was just us in the room so we took short naps. We arrived in Budapest around midnight and headed for the New York Cafe (which is the most beautiful in the world you can Google it). Since we were there in the middle of the night, we had no line to get in! We ordered coffees and hung out for an hour and half before taking Jess to do some sightseeing in the middle of the night. We walked all the way down to the Danube and I showed her some buildings and streets that I had visited earlier in March. We decided to head over to the airport at 3 in the morning with the bus that got us there at 4 am! We swiftly made it through security and were hitting a more delirious state of mind laughing at most things in the airport. We grabbed some breakfast at a restaurant in the airport and then rolled the dice with the vending machines to see if we got still or sparkling water! We boarded the flight and left a little late, but we still made it to Amsterdam by 9 in the morning and we were able to get a few more hours of sleep on the plane. After landing in Amsterdam, we bought our tickets for public transportation and hopped on the train to get to our hostel. We were able to get checked in early so we dropped off our bags and freshened up before going out for breakfast. We hitched another train ride into the city center and walked over to Cafe de Jaren for a delicious and very necessary breakfast with coffee! We did some exploring around the canals for the rest of the day including a side quest to the Rijksmuseum Gardens. We wandered down to the Cheese Museum and Tulip Museum. At this point, we were both starving and sleep deprived so we found an Italian restaurant that was a bit out of the way that had tables available. After the restaurant, we had to get a classic stroopwafel before traveling back to the hostel and got some very needed sleep.

Saturday was our Tulip Day (aka the real reason we went to Amsterdam this weekend). We grabbed breakfast at a cute little coffee shop near our bus stop and had a slice of banana bread and fresh madeleines (which might be my new favorite sweet treat)! We departed for the Keukenhof Gardens at 9 in the morning and took tons of photos. We grabbed hot chocolate and muffins in the gardens as a snack before heading back to the city around 1 pm. We decided to grab lunch at Foodhallen which is an indoor market that serves a variety of cuisines and drinks. We grabbed some more sweet treats at Lourens home to the famous cookie crossiant (it was definitely worth the hype). We headed back to the hostel (we passed a TK Maxx and I bought a new blow dryer that had a European outlet). We chilled for an hour before heading back out for a canal cruise. The cruise lasted about an hour and we were able to learn a lot of history about town and some fun newer things like how much the canal boat houses cost, which was way outside of our budget! We also learned that Amsterdam has a population of 1.5 million people, and there are approximately 1.6 million bikes in the town - which would explain why every time we tried to cross the street there were 20 bikes trying to move down the street! After our cruise, we grabbed dinner at a pub and had a snicker stroopwafel for dessert. We headed back to the hostel and packed our bags for the next leg of our adventure.

Sunday morning, we hopped on the train and headed back to the airport - we grabbed food at the supermarket and some coffees. We found our train under the airport and started our journey to Paris. We arrived around noon and after struggling a little bit to buy our public transportation passes. We walked over to the hostel and checked-in. Unfortunately, our rooms were not ready for us quite yet so we had to store our luggage and weren’t able to freshen up much before heading back out. On a side note, the guy that checked us in had actually studied in the US for a year at…. San Diego State University - in other words the other SDSU! I didn’t judge him too much for choosing the wrong SDSU, especially since he gave us a list of recommendations for food and activities! We grabbed lunch at a cafe he recommended that was right down the street. Afterwards, we had our first round of struggles with the public transportation system in Paris. We were able to make our way down to the Catacombs and since we were early we went on the hunt for some pastries. We had our catacomb tour which lasted about an hour, and if I am being honest this was not on my list of things to see while I was in Paris but I am happy Jess wanted to. I was able to learn a lot more about the history of Paris on this tour too, and that it was in fact not like the Scooby-Doo episode that I had grown up watching! After the catacombs, we walked over to the Pantheon and checked out a church close by. After the church, we wandered over to the Notre-Dame Cathedral and we sat and just enjoyed the moment listening to the bells. Eventually, we started our trek to dinner which was another Italian restaurant Marcello’s for drinks, dinner, and dessert. We battled with the public transportation a little more and made our way to the Eiffel Tower at 8:30 PM. We sat down and looked at the tower until the 9 PM sparkle! After the sparkle we went back to the hostel, but again the Parisian metro system…. ugh but we did accidentally leave the tunnel and found the Arc de Triomphe! We made it back to the hostel and grabbed our bags to check-in to our room for sleep.

Monday was a much more relaxed day of enjoying Paris, but first we had brunch with a surprise guest! Our cousin Jamie was on vacation in Paris this week too and it was great to catch up for a couple of hours. We definitely made the joke that the US was too close and naturally we had to visit each other in another country! After brunch, we walked over to the Big Bus Tour’s first stop and awaited our tour. We visited 10 different locations in Paris - most of which we had already seen the day before but we were able to get some more history. When the tour ended we went back to the Eiffel Tower for a picnic and to take some photos without all the people. After our picnic, we did some souvenir shopping and headed back to the hostel. We visited on the terrace for a bit and enjoyed our last night in Paris with the goal to get some more sleep.

The next morning, we woke up and took the metros to the airport and flew back to Budapest. We landed around noon and grabbed some food at the train station before riding the train back to Debrecen. After 3 hours on the train, we hopped off and dropped our bags at the dorm. We made a quick grocery trip to ALDI for some sandwich materials and made dinner back at the dorm before calling it a night and sleeping in.

Wednesday was a slow day of recovering from our long weekend. We grabbed lunch at a local cafe and had some more decompressing time in the dorm before hopping on the train back to Budapest. We decided to head straight to the airport to wait before Jessica’s flight home. I left at 4 AM to catch a train back to the Debrecen and Jessica went through security to grab food before her next flight. I wrote this on my train ride back to Debrecen and I am very much so looking forward to a long weekend of sleep before my spring break trip!

Photos will be coming soon but I have a lot to sift through from the trip so for now check out my socials for some of my favorites!

In all reality, Jess and I had an amazing week together (even though we wanted to murder each other a few times thanks to hunger and lack of sleep). It was incredibly hard to say goodbye at the airport, but I think we are going blame that on a lack of sleep and exhaustion! I am bummed I won’t have anyone else visiting me in Debrecen but I am also feeling blessed having people that are willing to spend the money to come and visit me in Europe! I also have to keep reminding myself that I will be back in the US by the end of June and that is not that far away when I start looking at my schedule!

Stay tuned for this next week.