B-B-B-Budapest

Well, we are back from Budapest, and I'm happy to say that our first trip was a great success!  Budapest was such a fun city and also very beautiful.  Every square inch was full of something different and unique.  We all loved how eclectic each place was--it really gave the city character.  We also met new people along the way, and we were pleasantly surprised at how friendly all of the locals were with us. 

This is our group in front of the Danube River.  The city of Budapest is divided in half by the river.  One half is called Buda, and the other is called Pest.  We stayed in a hostel on the Pest side, and visited a lot of the sites around the city on the Buda side during the day.  

On Saturday we took a boat tour up and down the Danube.  Above is a picture of the Parliament building which was absolutely breathtaking.  It really didn't look real and took me by surprise each time I looked at it.  We also went to the House of Terror, a museum dedicated to the Hungarians who died during communism and WWII.
This is one of the castles in Budapest.  There were so many interesting sights along the river--and they were even more stunning at night.
On Sunday we explored the city on foot.  The weather was absolutely perfect, and a nice relief from the 30 degree highs in Prague last week.  At least it hasn't snowed here yet!  (sorry, Kansas...)  We spent a relaxing day wandering and seeing more of the city.  Budapest is known for its spas and baths, which we wanted to see, but we weren't able to get into the building to look without paying.

Good news!  I have uploaded a lot more pictures, so you can click on the following links to see them: Loket Castle, Karlovy Vary, and Budapest.  I've also added captions (finally) so you know what you're looking at!  

We've started visiting classes this week, and I'm really excited about all of the art classes we will be taking.  We went to figure drawing tonight not expecting to do anything, but to our surprise, there were models there and we ended up drawing for 2 hours!  I think that class will be really fun but probably the most challenging.  Studio should be good also...I think I will be doing furniture design.  We officially start those next week, so until then we have quite a bit of downtime, yet the days seem to go by really fast.  Tomorrow's task: laundry.  It's funny how the simplest things (like doing laundry and getting dinner) end up becoming an adventure.