12 Hours (+) a Passenger...

I arrived at the airport just before noon. I checked in with bored blonde girl at the Delta desk.  My suitcase weighed exactly 50lbs. I had already printed my boarding pass, so I was ready to go through security. At security, I was chosen to do the expedited scan.  They swabbed my hands for explosives and then I just had to put my backpack on the belt and walk through the scanner. Matt was up at the gate waiting.  They asked us to switch to emergency row seats, so we did.  I don't mind being near the emergency exit.  We had pretzels and Coke for our in-flight snack.  The take-off and landings went pretty smoothly on this flight. 

Next, was Minneapolis-St. Paul.  The waiting area at the gate there has charging stations with iPads. 

It's a huge airport and really busy.  They checked our passports again and we boarded the plane.  Matt and I didn't have seats next to each other on this flight.  The plane was a huge. There were 8 seats across two seats on each side and four across the middle. I ended up next to a mom and her two kids, but they slept most of the time, so it was okay. East seat had its own TV screen with movies and TV shows I watched Divergent during dinner. There was a choice of entrees...

I had the beef with wild mushrooms and potatoes.  It was okay. I think it was mass-microwaved. After dinner they came back with coffee, tea, hot cocoa, brandy or cognac.  After dinner, I watched Frozen and tried to sleep.  Every time I fell asleep, the little girl next to me would elbow me or the plane would bounce and I would think my husband was driving off the road.  Breakfast was yogurt, oj, a fruit cup, an apple turnover and a roll with strawberry jam. They served ice cream bars after breakfast since everyone was asleep after dinner. The landing was pretty smooth.  The weirdest thing about this part of the trip is that the sun never set on us.  I saw a bit of a sunset briefly, but it never got fully dark as we moved from time zone to time zone.  

The Paris airport is a jungle of halls waves lined with metal framed windows.  You would think that the Paris airport would be amazing, but really, looking out the window, it looks like Spokane's airport and all the others.  Some of the walls are lined with paintings and there are mirrors behind the moving sidewalks.

The bathrooms were kind of trippy. The orange toilets were surrounded by frosted glass cubicles. The sink was wave shaped and the hand dryers are next to the faucets. 

The list of flights was huge and kind of confusing. 

We had to walk quite a ways to our gate and pass through security again where they took my water bottle "to empty it" and never gave it back.  I got my first passport stamp!

On the way to our gate...

The ceiling is pretty neat.  

This looked odd at first.  We thought it was a glass enclosed bathroom, but it is actually an elevator to the bathroom. 

Our gate...

They didn't load the flight to Budapest in any type of orderly fashion.  Once they started boarding, everyone just crowds in to get inside the roped off area and the check in podiums. My boarding pass wouldn't scan, but they keyed it in and it worked. Matt and I didn't sit together on this flight either. I ended up next to a nice couple who have done a lot of world traveling, Unfortunately, she needed to get up and use the bathroom several times during the flight and I was in the aisle seat.  The take-off on this flight wasn't too bad. The in-flight snack was half a sandwich in either salmon or bacon.  It was rather nasty. 

The landing for this flight was sketchy. It felt like the pilot descended way too fast and the actually touch down was jarring. Our luggage arrived on the baggage carousel pretty quickly and we left the airport in a shuttle.  

I wouldn't call the man who drove the shuttle a driver as much as I would call him a shuttle jockey. He drove it like it was stolen for sure, but that seems to be the way everyone drives here.  And pedestrians just walk out into the street expecting cars that are rocketing down the street to stop for them.  We arrived at our hostel in district 6 in one piece. Here's the front doors...

Looks nice, huh? It looks better inside, really. We carried our luggage up 6 flights of stairs (130 of them) and holy moly, I thought I was going to die. 

 The stairs looking down...

Pretty railing... 

They have a sense of humor about the stairs. (They do tell you about the stairs when you make reservations.) The password for the Wifi here is swearword stairs. There is an additional flight of stairs up to our room.

More hostel pics. (I will take pics of the inside tomorrow. There are some pretty unique murals.) 

The balcony...

View from the balcony... 

View from the window on the stairs up to the room.... 

The hostels courtyard... 

First door to the street...

You have to use a code to get in, plus unlock two doors and then your room door. There is a button to get out too... 

Street door... 

After we washed the plane smell off of us, we set out to find food and to go to the train station to buy my tickets to Romania. 

We had pizza from a small shop that was 200 HUF (Hungarian Forint) 227 forints is about one US dollar. 

The train station is about 2km from the hostel.  I think it is still in the same district as our hostel, but I am not sure.  The streets are filled with people and traffic. There are bars, restaurants and stores packed into the lower levels of old buildings which line the streets. Some of the streets are cobble stone.  It is a really eclectic mix of new and old. 

This is the train station...

   

Inside the train station... 

I don't have photos inside the international ticket office because they are not allowed.  Picture a glass enclosed DOL counter that curves as it goes left. 5 of the 8 windows were covered in black curtains.  As you walk in, you take a number and join the other miserable people who line the walls waiting for their number to come up.  The floors were too sticky to sit on and the benches were never empty. 

My number was 418 and they were on 372 when we got there.  They also intermingled other numbers for people who just needed info. The actual transaction to buy my tickets is one of the weirdest I have had yet.  The woman in the window spoke to me through the glass without ever actually talking directly into the microphone that might have given me some sort of clue as to what the heck she might be saying. Somehow I managed to purchase my tickets-again- (with my debit card that she didn't care at all if I was the actual owner of) and we left the train station after more than an hour. Thanks Matt for waiting so patiently! 

It was starting to get dark as we walked back to the hostel...

  Here's some of the stores that line the streets....

Chalkboards at the hostel with events and Hungarian words/phrases.  

 And now for the weird...

From the balcony, you can see a church. Cool, right? But what in the world are those things flying around it? See the yellow dots? It looks like moths flying around a light, but those would have to be some pretty big moths to be able to see them from so far away. 

*Sorry for the long post and any typos/errors.  I am exhausted, but I knew I would get behind in my photos etc. if I didn't get this done.