My first weekend trip while abroad! A few new friends I had made at LCF and I went to Budapest from January 24th to the 26th. During this time, it was even colder in Budapest than it was in London! So, we had a later flight and landed at around 11pm in Budapest. It was such a culture shock because we were so used to everything being in English from the U.S. of course as well as London. We quickly adapted and found a taxi stand to take us to the Airbnb we had rented prior to getting there. During the taxi ride we were all mesmerized by our surroundings staring out the window and pointing things out to each other. We were staying about thirty minutes from the airport and arrived at our Airbnb at about midnight. Our Airbnb host was running late so across from our Airbnb we saw a beautiful hotel and decided to get a quick drink while we waited to be let into our apartment for the weekend. Once we met up with the Airbnb host that’s when things took a turn for the worse. We open up the door to a disheveled apartment with dirty sheets and towels in the bedrooms and bathrooms and a hired maid who had two men with her. We immediately felt unsafe and called the Marriot to see if we could have two hotel rooms that would fit three people each. Luckily, they had availability AND Airbnb refunded us and paid for our two-night stay in the Marriot a few blocks away. We did not let this put a damper on our first trip experience, so we went to bed and woke up for our jam-packed day. On Saturday we walked all over Buda and Pest, but our first stop was this indoor market called Váci Utica market. They had everything from butchers to food stands, to stands with little souvenirs. We then traveled to the Danube river and crossed over the chain bridge which connects Buda and Pest. In Buda we went to the castle district and took a shuttle tour where we could hop on and off to get closer looks at each castle. After that we grabbed a bite to eat and continued to explore. Later that night we went to dinner at a restaurant called Mazel Tov which is very known for the amazing food (it was seriously the best food I had ever had). After dinner we went to the ruin bar which is typical on a Saturday night. The ruin bar was super grungy with an underground feel. It was covered in graffiti and was multi leveled with each floor having its own bar. On Sunday we visited the Dohany Street synagogue which is the biggest temple in Europe. After that, we went back to the Danube river to see the shoes on the Danube bank memorial which represented how many Jews were rounded up and killed there. This memorial brought out a lot of emotions from me. Later that day we traveled back to the airport and landed home in London.