Adventures with Jack and Julia

Train travel makes everything so easy in Europe. After just three hours aboard a comfy train, we arrived in Budapest! Of course one of the first things we had to do was checkout the local market nearby and see what kind of food they had on offer. We sampled some delicious pepperoni sticks we eyed and also asked the butcher for his recommendation to another and they were phenomenal. We immediately made plans to come back another day to try different ones.

Something we didn’t know before researching for this leg of the trip is that Budapest is divided by the Danube river with two distinct sides: hilly and historic Buda on the west side and the more flat and vibrant Pest on the east side. On the Buda side you can visit the historic Buda Castle and the area is more residential, while on the Pest side, it serves as the bustling city centre where most of the restaurants and hotels are located. Our hotel and the market were located in Pest so after our snack we walked over to the Buda side to do some sightseeing.

After crossing the famous Széchenyi Chain Bridge, we walked up to the Buda Castle, around the Fisherman’s Bastion and saw another beautiful church: The Church of Our Lady of Buda Castle. All were incredible and offered a stunning view looking back over to where we’d just come from. Pro tip: save money and time by skipping the funicular and walking up the hill. You still get to see the same view and there’s a bridge that goes right over top of the cars so you can take pictures of it:

We also spent some time exploring the Pest side and checked out St. Stephen’s Basilica and Heroes’ Square, which was located just outside of another beautiful park. We wandered through the park until we found a pond that looked over on another castle so we stopped and took in the scenery and the sun for a bit there as well.

One thing we are learning about Europe is that there is almost always a really good hike just outside the city and easily accessible by bus. We found one to do called the Hármashatár Mountain Panorama Loop hike, which ended up being a really scenic hike.

Our trip to Budapest was complete after visiting a well known Hungarian restaurant, Belvárosi Disznótoros – Károlyi utca, for some delicious sausage and mashed potatoes. This spot was awesome. You walk in, there are two ladies behind the counter and they ask what kind of sausage you want, whether you want potatoes or sauerkraut or some other pickled veg, and of course they’ve got a fridge full of large bottles of ice cold beer. Definitely a must visit!

Budapest is such a cool city and we really enjoyed our time there. Definitely worth the stop on your way towards our next destination of Ljubljana.

Ljubljana:

Not the easiest name to pronounce and it took us a couple tries to nail it down. We made it to our hotel and the best way to describe it would be a capsule hotel but they also offer tents on the roof in the summer time. It’s called the Fuzzy Log and they’ve set up the room such that you’re essentially in a bunk bed but the bunks are divided into different rooms. We had the top bunk and accessed our space from a separate door from the people who were on the bottom bunk and we only had a small amount of space below to keep our belongings but we managed to make it work. Fortunately the hotel did have a large space for guests to enjoy complete with a ping pong table and a kitchen for cooking food, so we never felt too cramped.

Ljubljana’s old town was small but was jam packed with tons of cute restaurants and patios all along the river. People really slow down in places like this and enjoy time connecting with friends at the local haunts and they were always filled with people at all hours of the day. Something we can both get used to and want to find more places to do so back home as well.

We walked up to the Ljubljana Castle and took in the views of the city below. After that, we continued to wander the old town, saw the famous dragon bridge, and discovered yet another amazing park called Tivoli Park, where we spent some time people watching.

We were then immediately drawn to this restaurant with a giant sausage hanging out front called the Klobasarna and Jack’s Ukrainian heritage wouldn’t allow us to simply walk past it. We ordered some a plate of mouth-watering sausages and an Istrian stew which is a soup made with beans, sauerkraut, potatoes and spare ribs. Both were outstanding but soup especially surprised us both and it was the perfect compliment to the colder weather that day.

We knew as part of our stop in Ljubljana we wanted to take a day trip to the picturesque Lake Bled. It’s less than an hour away and is a must visit while there. We grabbed a coffee and walked around the entire lake and took a detour at one point to climb up a couple hundred feet to the best viewpoint above the lake. It was so peaceful while we were there and although we didn’t go to the island in the middle, taking a couple of hours to walk the entire loop and marvelling at the landscape was more than enough to make this a top highlight of our whole trip thus far.

We’re moving through Europe pretty quickly so only had a couple of days here in Ljubljana before heading over to Croatia. It’s a country that we have both been before, but couldn’t wait to visit again! We can’t wait to do some amazing hikes, eat cevapi & ajvar, spend time near the water and soak up the sun. We’ve got Zadar and Šibenik lined up for Croatia and then it’s onward to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Sarajevo and Mostar. All four of these destinations will make up the next blog post.

With Hungary and Slovenia now checked off, we are now over six months into our trip. What a blast it’s been so far and we’ve still got some of our most anticipated countries to come. Thanks for following along and lots of love to all of you!

– Jack and Julia

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