My journey began landing in Budapest on 12/12/12. The last time that kind of number pattern will ever happen for me.
Budapest
My parents own a gorgeous apartment in Budapest where I was able to stay for free and explore the beautiful city whilst living on its ring road. The language, I'm not so fond of. I forgot it as a child and am finding it difficult to pick up again. It's part of the Urel language system which includes only Hungarian and Finnish. It's not a very pretty language either. The city is quite amazing though. It's lovely to simply walk through and explore the rich history and baroque architecture.
Being able to speak a bit of Hungarian really helped but you can always get by with English, especially in the city. They're generally friendly people.
Whilst there is so much to see and do in Budapest as any guidebook would show you, I would personally advice a small trip out to Szentendre which is a short train ride away. In the winter time, it becomes an adorably decorated quaint little town selling more affordable trinkets than in the capital. It's a great city escape on the cheap.
Throughout the winter, we kept going back and forth through Budapest and parts of Romania where my family reside in. We also tried our hand at skiing for a week in the Romanian alps. Seriously good value for money. It's just that most people don't think of skiing in Romania. It's always France, Japan, New Zealand... Which can be very expensive. The quality of the slopes in Romania are just as good and the accommodation is comfortable and reasonably priced.
Iceland
The holiday really started to feel like a holiday for me when we went to Iceland. I had never been there before and it's an exciting land to explore to say the least! From taking my bra off in front of a frozen waterfall in a Contiki Tours-style photo to getting our humongous monster of a 4x4 stuck in the snow and needing an even larger vehicle to come tow us out. The wheels were as big as an average person! And they needed to do a run up and yank our car out because it wouldn't even budge at first!
Being in Iceland in February it was still northern lights season and so we decided to drive up the island overnight to go see them. It was a surprisingly long drive. The map made it look a lot smaller. A lot. It was exhausting to say the least and downright scary driving with 2m visibility on icy gravelled roads. We only knew where to steer by following the lights of the car in front of us and even so would lose them every now and then.
When we finally made it up north, we gave up on finding accommodation because it was so late, we decided to sleep in the car. We didn't even see any lights that night as it was cloudy. Sleeping consisted of me waking up every 3 hours from the cold and turning the engine on for heat.
We did the same thing the second night. We did however get to see some lights! At first I thought it was just cloud but it was odd looking and I decided to try out a long exposure shot. Then, there, in my review display, a bright trail of green light appeared. It was there all along!
Whilst there are interesting landscapes and frozen waterfalls to see in the winter, the day is extremely short (9am -3pm sun) and I would definitely rather visit in the summer. There's so much to see! Many, many waterfalls, the original 'geysir', volcanoes and the man-made blue lagoon in the capital.
Iceland. Definitely a must on any travellers' list.
Italy - Winter
How could a keen photographer like myself ever pass up the opportunity to see the Venice Carnival? It was amazingly fun. You can just walk around and there's a photo opportunity everywhere you look! And they're all very friendly. Don't forget your pleases and thank-yous :)
C and I spent our nights out walking around with nice but cheap masks, enjoying wine with locals and fellow travellers. This was also the spoiling part of the trip, spending 2 nights in a 3 star hotel with the most delicious buffet breakfast! Too bad we ended up being too hungover after the first night to enjoy it :(
During this time we also visited Rome and Milan, because it was cheaper to catch trains around there and fly back to Budapest than to go back directly. The one thing I still remember quite well was that it suddenly snowed really heavily in Milan and covered the whole city again. So we decided to go to a park and built a snow-crocodile. Our snow man had his head kicked off after a few hours but the crocodile survived!
The U.K.
With a limited amount of time being allowed in Schengen, we had to venture out into other countries as well. I'd never been to any parts of the U.K. before and was excited to increase my list of places I had been to.
London was surprisingly sunny! We stayed at a friend's house as well and this saved us LOADS of money. London hotels are expensive as all hell. Avoid if you can. But London is fun to explore. Lots to see and do and just walk around for hours. The tube however.... Whatever you do, try to avoid having to go to the airport on the tube during peak hour. We were literally up against the glass. I was basically standing on my bag to fit. It's pretty good otherwise, other than one time we arrived by plane and it got stuck a few stops away from our destination so our friends had to come meet us and take us home by bus
The rest of England was quite nice too! No car for once because renting as an under 26 year-old costs 4x the price of renting the car. We went by coach which was cheaper than the train and a bit more comfortable.
