A Very European Christmas

We spent Christmas in Budapest.  I had anticipated it being a lot harder to be away from home than it was.  (Although, I don't plan on making it a habit to be away for the holidays.) I was so lucky to be with one of my good friends from home and a couple of new friends I have made in Switzerland.

We arrived in Budapest on the 23rd.  After dinner and a little walking around, we headed to bed for an early morning at the thermal baths! It was the perfect Christmas Eve. We got to the baths and it was sunny and 50 degrees out (this is a good thing). A few hours in a warm pool followed by a massage and some more pool time, all for the low cost of $30! It was absolutely fabulous!

Our Castle filled with piles of water!

After exploring the city some more we discovered another highlight of Budapest. This delicious treat caught our attention when there was an extremely long line at the stand. We couldn't not try it! 

Now in case you can't tell what that is let me try to explain. It is this absolutely delicious piece of hot doughy heaven covered in cinnamon and sugar.  Sound amazing right? It was! 

Then we headed back for a short and very unplanned nap. We then headed to check out the church and see the cityscape at night.  Then we headed back to our apartment to make our impromtu Christmas Eve dinner. Since none of us are competent in Hungarian, we bought cream cheese instead of ricotta cheese.  We were also left with very few pans! We are creative people though so we made a successful lasagna-esq dinner followed by several bottles of wine 

and night of playing cards! 

Christmas day was relaxing as well. We ventured out for a walk around the city. It didn't last too long because it was hailing and windy...and all around unpleasant to be outside. We did get a chance to check out the Parliament building (the third largest). We then made another dinner and spent the evening relaxing, watching Love Actually, and Skyping with our families. It was sooo great to be able to see my family on Christmas! Technology saved the day again! Stephen (my little brother) set a place for me at the table on Christmas Eve which meant the world to me! I am glad that I was with some great friends for the holidays, but nothing beats having an amazing family around you! 

On our way out we went to Memento Park, which is an accumulation of old Communist statues. We took it upon ourselves to pose as each statue was posing.  

Shelly reenacting the statue