Day 16

Tyler estimates that we have traveled over 2000 km so far (in Europe). That's a lot of traveling, and we are starting to feel it as we are getting more and more tired as this trip wears on. But we're enjoying Europe a lot!

This morning we ate muffins for breakfast, then set out on foot to the Schloss Schonnbrunn, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The walking idea was a mistake as it took about 40 minutes to get there and it was very windy and very cold. But somehow we made it and it was worth the trip.

First, we went inside the palace and did the short, cheap tour. It went by very quick but we saw a total of 26 rooms that were fully furnished. After the tour, we went out back to the huge garden/park area. We first went into the maze/labyrinth area. We did a hedge maze, which we finished in 3 minutes and 42 seconds. There was one old guy who was stuck in the maze for a long time, so maybe we're just especially good at mazes (and I taped some of the old guy's struggles in the maze). The other 2 mazes were not so much mazes but labyrinths, and they had some neat obstacles/games in them. Again, I have some of these on video. From there we hiked up another hill, I'm really getting sick of hills, to a large royal monument. Up there we got a nice view of the palace.

On the way back we took the subway, because we're lazy, and as I said above, tired. We were getting hungry so we stopped by our favourite Austrian restaurant. We were in line behind 2 of my dream girls. Why are they my dream girls you ask? Well, not only were they 11s on a 1-10 scale of hotness, but they were in line at our favourite Austrian restaurant of them all: KFC. We speculated as to what they would order: a twin bucket, a party bucket? Would they they get original, spicy, or extra crispy? Would they get french fries or chicken fries? It turns out one got a garden salad and the other got a garden salad with a piece of chicken. But it doesn't matter what they got, the fact that these two hot girls ate at KFC automatically guarantees them a spot on my dream girl list. *sigh*

We ate our KFC on the train, (yes I know, we're really eating healthy this trip), and tried to relax. Unfortunately, we were sitting in someone's reserved seats, so we had to move. And right when I was in the middle of eating a chicken wing! We pick some new seats, and right after I take another bite of the wing, some more people come and say that they've reserved these seats as well. We switch seats for the third time and thankfully no one claims our seats this time.

We arrive in Budapest and easily find our hostel. Our room is pretty big and spacious. We ate at a place called the Pink Cadillac, an Italian restaurant, and we both had spaghetti. I had the Bolognese (basically spaghetti with meat sauce). Tyler had spaghetti with a spicy sauce, I can't remember the name of it now. The menu was huge, it was like a book. They had at least 20 different varieties of spoaghetti, plus many different kinds of pasta and pizza. My spaghetti cost 6.40 Euro (or 1700 Hungarian Forint), very cheap, and Tyler's cost similar.

After our dinner, we took a nice walk down the pedestrian road in Budapest. It's smaller than the other ones we've been on, but it still has lots of interesting stores. It's also where we had another cultural experience.

We were walking down the pedestrian road when 2 extremely hot girls stopped us and asked us if we spoke English. They said that they were Croatian and had just arrived in Budapest this morning. They told us they were lost and looking for a club. We had a map so we showed them where the street was that they were looking for. It was in the same direction we were walking, so they walked with us down the street. Innocent, right? Well, then they ask us to join them for a coffee in this club. Now, to a normal person this may seem like the 2 girls were trying to pick us up. But soon, because of my superior intellect, the alarm bells started going off. Why would two very good looking girls, blonde, from Croatia, be roaming the street, looking for 2 guys to pick up? Normally, they shouldn't have any problem getting guys, in fact guys would probably be going after them. We soon got to the street they were looking for and we told them that we wouldn't be joining them for coffee. That's when they practically started begging us to go with them because it was "cold outside". Anyway, we got away from them and continued down the street. That's when Tyler and I started thinking about what exactly happened and what their motives were. We eventually turned around and started back the same way we had come. Lo and behold, out in the distance and walking the opposite way were those same 2 girls. I guess they were still "lost". It was then we decided that they must be working for this club that they wanted us to go to, and their job was to entice people to go in. So we decide to check down that road to see if there actually was a club. On the way back, we notice the 2 girls a little bit behind us walking back down the road again. We stop to "look" into a store to let them pass us, and then we follow them from a distance. They end up going into a McDonalds, close to the street that they "needed help finding". I guess they prefer the coffee in McDonalds. We go down the street where there was supposedly a club, and there is no club or coffee shop at all. There are 2 guys leaning against a corner farther down, and we don't go any farther just in case these girls were scamming us into getting mugged. They could have also been prostitutes.  Or maybe they could have actually been hitting on us lol.  Either way, it was an interesting cultural experience.