Budapest

Well.. unlike Prague, we didnt not enjoy Budapest as much! We found the people to either be very rude or very nice (nothing in between!). When we first arrived in Budapest it was close to 11pm and we were having trouble finding an ATM that worked with our bank cards or even an money exchange place. So, we ventured into the underground metro area and were stopped by 4 of these 'ticket checkers' who rudely asked to see our tickets. Of course, we didnt not have tickets as we didnt even know that we were in the actual underground area. The 'train trolls' ... as we called them.. were very rude and intimidating and tried to fine us 6000 forinths (about 25€) as we did not have tickets. We tried to explain to them that we were not even aware we were in the underground system but they wouldnt hear it and kept telling us that they were calling the police and we would be in huge trouble! Thankfully, as we were waiting for the 'police' we were approached by 3 girls who were from Seattle that currently live in Budapest and they told us that the train trolls were notorious for picking on tourists and scaring them into paying the fee (but in reality, if you havent actually rode the underground yet, they cant ticket you). The girls instructed us to just take our bags and leave as the train trolls would only try to stop us by standing in front of us and they couldnt actually physically stop us. However, by this time, Tessa and Corey had been escorted by one of the train trolls up to use an ATM to get money so we could pay our fine. THANKFULLY our ATM cards did not work at the ATM they went to and in the end, the train trolls just let us go. Definitely not a first good impression!

We also found that a lot of the service people would act like they were inconvienced to help us even in the resturants.

The only super great thing we did while in Budapest was a cave tour. Theyre are a lot of caves underneath the city of Budapest and wow it was so amazing. We thought we were just going through a walk of the caves but we were extremely surprised that we were actually crawling through small spaces and climbing up sides of the caves. There were some spaces that you had to oddly contort yourself to make it to the other side. It was defintely very fun!

Overall, the things to see in Budapest were awesome but we felt like we were an inconvience to the service staff pretty much everytime we ate out and the metro system is definitely not traveler friendly. I probably wouldnt go back to Budapest anytime soon!