For Christmas we visited Cologne and Budapest.  We like visiting the Christmas markets found all over Europe.

In Cologne we saw 4 different markets, including one at the base of the Cathedral.  All were lit and decorated a bit differently.  Our favorite was the brownie forest.  (brownies are said to aid in tasks around the house) There was a lot of street food available- Jenn especially enjoyed Glühwein.  I liked the Rösti.  The Cathedral was really impressive; we probably should have made more time to explore inside.  They were doing work on it so there is scaffolding around it in places, even attached to the side very high up.  Overall, we enjoyed our few days in Cologne.

The bulk of our trip was spent in Budapest, Hungary.  We both really loved Budapest.  The city has an old world feel, reminiscent of Prague or Vienna.  The architecture is beautiful, while still showing the scars of it’s past (unlike the aforementioned cities).  In general, Budapest was very affordable.  I went to my first Michelin star restaurant here (Costes) on this trip and it was fabulous!  A bit expensive, but it was quite an experience.

We took the hop-on hop-off bus, as we frequently do, to help get an overview of the city and a little bit of history.  The bus was ok, the audio was low content and the wait for the bus to arrive was rather long.  We took the BigBus tour, and I would try the other company if we were to go back.  We really enjoyed the chamber music concert we attended.

We like to take food tours, and Jenn found a great one in Budapest.  We got lucky and were the only people on the food tour the morning we’d booked.  The guide, Nora, gave us more history about Budapest, going back to the Magyar.  And of course, we had a lot of really good food on the tour.  Jenn and I both found the food in Budapest to be quite good (not just on the tour or at Costes!)

On our last full day we took the Hammer and Sickle tour .  The tour was very informative, going into what daily life was like 20, 30, 40 years ago in Budapest.  It’s interesting to take tours like this because the history classes in my education glossed over these parts of history, and when it was mentioned, it was always in a negative light.

Our trip was fantastic, and I’d really like to go back.  Though we stayed several days, there was a lot more we could do in Budapest (so many restaurants we missed!)  The people were friendly and it seemed the majority spoke english so it was very easy to get around.  They have good public transit, and it was generally inexpensive.