Hungary

The sun is shining, the sky is blue and our cupboards are full of festive goodies. When we started 2016 we certainly didn’t expect to end the year back in Asia but here we are, spending Christmas in Chiang Mai after a year of intense highs and lows and many amazing travel experiences. Here’s our 2016 travel roundup and a look at the highlights from what turned out to be a rocky, yet transformative year.
Our eight-week trip through Eastern Europe was one of my travel highlights of the year. Although we were on an extremely tight budget, we managed to save a lot of money by travelling by bus. This allowed us to visit five countries, eat loads of delicious food, and go crazy with sightseeing.
This summer we got our first taste of travel in Eastern Europe. Although we barely scratched the surface of the region during the eight-week trip, we crammed as much culture, history and delicious food into our adventure as we could. Our journey took us through UNESCO towns and turquoise seas in Croatia to sedate Slovakia and the heaving capital cities of Budapest and Prague. So, how much did our Eastern Europe trip cost us?
Shall we take a short tour of the city?” asked our Airbnb host Tibor, who’d come to pick us up from the bus station in Budapest, Hungary. Agreeing, we soon found ourselves driving alongside the River Danube, which separates the now unified Buda and Pest districts of the city; grand bridges stretched over the murky water and boats trundled along beneath in the gathering darkness. On the riverbank lights began to blink on in the Hogwarts-esque Parliament building and across the brown water on a grassy hillside, the spiky spires and turrets of the castle district rose into the twilight.