new year's eve flashback.

V.

Guys!! Hey! How've you been? :) I hope you've all had a great beginning of 2014 and enjoyed New Year's Eve- whether it was home in bed, resenting pretending that December 31st is any different than all the other 364 days or maybe partying somewhere and having fun with friends. I personally spent some marvellous 3 days in Budapest with my bf. I'll tell you the story in pictures ..

Our journey started on December 30th at 9am in the morning. We took the train from Vienna to Budapest Keleti and immediately checked in at our lovely hotel.

Later on, we explored a whole n'other part of the city, as our hotel was on a totally different spot than the last one we had stayed at in February. First we went to this well known market-hall which was quite nice. I honestly must say though that I expected more from it as everyone has been telling me that it is absolutely awesome and a total must-see sight. However, it wasn't THAT special in my opinion, yet a nice place to visit. :)

Later on, we headed towards the main shopping district of Budapest and explored some new shops and streets.

 

At one of the main squares of the city there was this really nice Christmas/New Year's Eve market where we basically drooled on all the yummy food that was being produced behind the different booths.

After seeing all those delicious meals we figured .. why not grab a bite to eat somewhere? So we went to our favourite restaurant in town.

The boat restaurant Spoon is an absolutely fantastic, seemingly unaffordable place that offers you a magificent view on the Danube and the Buda-castle. It is, however, totally affordable as we had found out the last time we were there! We paid like 30€ for a huge bottle of water and delicious meals for two, which is like nothing considering the gorgeous atmosphere and view you get while eating.

That night we went back to the hotel saturated and happy. 

The next day we had breakfast at our hotel and again discovered some parts of the city we've never seen before. We decided to go to this island in the middle of the Danube where there's a park, some old buildings, ruins and so on ..

As we were entering the park we saw those super cool bike-car-thingies (I don't know how to describe it more precisely) and were like "what the heck,- let's do something we've never done before!" So we rented that bike-car-thingy for 3000HUF for half an hour and had our fun driving around the park. Besides the unfortunate incident of my pantyhose getting stuck in the pedal for a quick second, it really was a lot of fun!

As soon as we realized though that buses were allowed to drive on the same street as we did we kind of got nervous dawdling along like two turtles in front of those slightly dangerous vehicles and decided to take a detour into the woody parts of the park. Thankfully, we made it back to the start point without losing any of our body parts (and clothes for that matter) or running over innocent animals along the way.

Feeling proud of our new sportive attitude (that only lasted 13 minutes,- tops!) we soon got a familiar feeling in our stomachs that made us hunt for something eatable around the city. It didn't take long for us to find something.

 

As we were unable to get a table at this really nice restaurant the last time we were in Budapest, we were lucky this time and immediately fell in love with the location (and the food, of course). 

The place is called Robinson Restaurant and is situated right in the middle of Városligeti Lake, a few minutes away from Heroes' Square (Hősök tere).

Both the view and the food were again really nice and we enjoyed every little bit of the location.

After spending about two hours at that restaurant (it was so cozy there!) we decided to take a quick spin through the park. However, as it had gotten cooler than we'd thought, we changed our minds and prefered another round of food over sportive action! 

So we went to this other place we'd been before once and indulged in some cake and hot drinks.

As we realized that it had gotten darker outside we decided to go back to our hotel to take a little nap. At around 8pm we went to get some dinner at our hotel restaurant and later prepared for our New Year's Eve on the Buda-Castle! So we bought a bottle of sparkling wine at a supermarket around the corner, wrapped up in some cozy outdoor clothing and waited for the fireworks to begin.

 

It really was a fantastic night! :)