Hey everyone!
As I mentioned a while ago, I was writing a Vienna travel guide for Booktrip.de.
In case you are interested (and understand German đ )Â – have a look at it HERE:
Bratislava âfirst impressions
When it comes to traveling, I feel like I developed a pattern. I tend to always strive for places and destinations that are far away, the further the better. At least it looks like that when I look at the stamps in my passport. Colombia, New Zealand, the U.S.A, Mexico ⊠all of those places are at least a 7 hour flight away.
I only started to realize that about a year ago, when people I talked to were always sure that wouldnât be interested in a trip to Italy, because âIâm sure youâve been there alreadyâ. They were always pretty surprised when I told them that I hardly knew Europe yet. I havenât been to Italy really, I havenât been to London or Paris and I havenât even been to Bratislava, which is literally RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER.
So in May, a friend and I decided to check out Bratislava for a couple of days. Not knowing what to expect, because, well, it is so close to Vienna and the Austrian border, we were a bit afraid it would be pretty much the same but smaller.
On finishing âŠ
I donât know how you feel about it, but to me there is hardly anything more satisfying than finishing a project. Be it a puzzle Iâve been working on for what seems like ages, a thesis for university or a genuine project of the heart.
Iâve been working on all three of those in the last half a year and a while ago I was able to finish at least ONE of them. (No ⊠itâs not the puzzle! đ )
I finished the travel guide I wrote for Booktrip.de.
Magical morning at the Green Lake (GrĂŒner See ) in Styria
Up until about two years ago, I’ve never heard about the GrĂŒner See (Green Lake) in Styria. But then there was this article about it in the news papers and it got nominated to be one of Austriaâs most beautiful spots. I started wondering why neither I nor anyone I know has ever been there, since it’s pretty close to home and honestly… hence the size of Austria, pretty close to about every corner of good old Austria! đ
Two friends and I had the idea of doing a little more homeland exploring whenever we have some time to spare and when the idea of going to GrĂŒner See came up, we were instantly hooked.
Weiterlesen „Magical morning at the Green Lake (GrĂŒner See ) in Styria“
Vienna never ceases to amaze me!
I havenât mentioned it yet, but I am currently writing on an E-Book travel guide about my beloved Vienna. Some of you might question that, since I hardly ever wrote about Vienna here. To be honest, I havenât gotten to write on this blog regularly in a while. (Will change that as soon as the travel guide is finished! đ A pinky promise I made to myself)
So WHY am I mentioning the whole travel guide thing now? Because I realized today, that, since Iâm working on that project, I learned so much about my city and started to love it more every single day.
A not so ordinary day at the Spa – SzĂ©chenyi Bath in Budapest
When I decided to meet up in Budapest with friends, the first things coming to my mind about the city where: Goulash and the famous baths.
Since I donât eat meat, the Goulash experience wasnât really an option and I was looking forward to the Bath part twice as much! đ
My friends and I had been in Budapest for 2 days already, before we finally had time to make it to a Bath. But first, there was quite a tough decision to make⊠which one to choose? There is so many Baths in Budapest and there is even more opinions on which one is the BEST.
Baths do play a very important role in Budapest and they are a huge part of its culture. Going to a bath is a traditional thing to do for a lot of people in Budapest and this is why it was quite important to me, to go to an authentic one.
We decided to go to the SzĂ©chenyi Bath, not because we knew much about it, but , to be honest, only because the yellow, pompous building looked cute. As we found out later, it is one of the most popular ones anyway and itâs among the biggest and one of the oldest too.
Getting there was pretty easy, we just took the metro to the SzĂ©chenyi fĂŒrdĆ stop and there it was. Since it was a quite gloomy day, there werenât lots of other people and we were able to go straight in. We ended up getting the day pass for 1700 Forint, which, in my opinion is quite pricey compared to all the other things in Budapest. But well…since itâs a MUST DO in Budapest…we were happy to pay that of course! đ
Inside it immediately looked like something from another time. Everything was quite old looking, used and wellâŠletâs say a bit shabby⊠but I think this is exactly what gives it its special vibe. You could almost see the monarchs walking through the changing rooms and sitting in the hot pools! đ
One quite odd thing was, that you aren’t allowed to lock your own locker! You have to call one of the „Locker Ladies“ to lock it for you and then remember the number and watch out not to loose the non-number matching wristband they give you! If you want to get something out of the locker again, you have to wait until one of the ladies is free to help you. It wasn’t too bad the day we were there, but I can’t imagine the chaos on a busy day to be honest!!
There is so many different pools to bathe in, but the inside ones werenât really appealing to me, since it was summer and the inside of the old building was pretty unbearable for me. The outside bath though was perfect. The most impressive thing for me, wasnât the pools though, it was watching Hungarians enjoy and value this bathing tradition. Some of them had little chess boards with them and cans of beer and they were sitting there in groups, amidst the steaming hot water, playing chess for hours.
You can easily spot the true Hungarians among the tourists and if you get the chance to be involved in a game of chess with one of them, you can be sure to have some really interesting conversations.
All in all, I really enjoyed the visit to the SzĂ©chenyi Bath, but I realized, Iâm not really the Spa type of girl. It was definitely a onetime thing, Iâll always remember!
Budapest – in one day
Although Iâm living in Vienna for a couple of years now, and the connection between the hungarian capital and the austrian one is pretty amazing (there is plenty of busses and trains, that take you there for under 20 Euros), I havenât been to Budapest for more than a stop-over. When friends told me a couple of weeks ago, that they will be stopping there on their backpacking trip, I was totally up for joining.
So last week I took the Flixbus from Vienna and three short hours later, ended up in a city that looks so similar to Vienna, but it SO TOTALLY different.
Since we only had a couple days to explore, me and my friends just dropped our bags at the hostel and started into the bustling city.
Since no great day ever started without breakfast, this was exactly where we were heading first. Thanks to my favorite travel inspiration (Instagram đ ) I found this very cute and stylish breakfast place named âSzimplyâ. It was kind of hard to find at first, since it is located in a patio, but totally worth looking for. We actually ended up there twice; this is how good it was! đ
The cafĂ© itself is tiny and for coffee you have to cross over to the other side of the patio to get it from a different place, but the breakfast there was amazing. Great quality of food perfectly seasoned and gorgeously arranged. And most important â they have an amazing variety vegetarian and vegan breakfast options. Being a vegetarian myself and traveling with a vegan, finding veggie friendly places to eat wasn’t actually as hard as we feared. At the Szimply we opted for a sweet quinoa bowl with fruits and flowers,  pan fried eggs with lots of salmon and been purĂ©e and the best avocado bread I’ve ever had.
After breakfast we started our Budapest exploration, we walked all over Pest, passing impressive monuments, street artists, Baumkuchen stands and a loooot of fellow traveler. One of the most memorable place we came across was the holocaust memorial. The „Shoes on the Danube“ memorial is one of the most moving memorials I’ve ever seen.
Gyula Pauer and Can Togay , two sculptors, created this touching memorial in memory of the victims shot into the Danube by Arrow Cross militiamen in 1944 and 1945.
Next we crossed the bridge over to Buda.
Buda and Pest have been united into one city only in 1873 and from what Iâve seen there is still a huge difference between the two sides of the city.
Buda with its hills, the Castle Quarter, the museums and the cobblestone streets makes you feel like you just went back into imperial times. Besides of a couple of tourist groups we didnât meet any other people and the whole area felt like it is just there for being looked at and admired. Over at the Buda side of the City, we also had quite a hard time finding a place to stop for coffee. Since we tried to avoid âtouristyâ places, we wandered around Buda for quite a while till we found a cafĂ©.
One thing I really liked about Buda is the view from the castle hill. There is a couple of famous viewpoints, like the Fishermanâs Bastion and the Citadella fortress, where youâll have a splendid look over Pest, the Danube and the gorgeous Chain Bridge. To get up to the castle, you can either walk through the gardens underneath the castle, wander through the part of town underneath the hill and find the steps that take you up the hill, or you take the more comfortable way and ride up the hill with the Funicular.
On top of the hill – Buda Castle
Pest on the other hand is full of life and you wouldnât have to walk more than 2 minutes to find a coffee place. Pest is also where all the nightlife is happening. From the famous ruin bars ( there is more than 30Â of them) Â to hundreds of pubs and clubs, there is a chance to party in Pest every night of the year. But Pest has more to offer than just party; it is great for shopping, eating out and there is lots of historic sights on this side of the Danube as well.
One of my favorite places in Pest was definitely the market hall. It is full of fresh fruits, great variety of typical hungarian food and all sorts of souvenirs. Also, the hall itself is pretty spectacular.
The Jewish Quarter in Pest is known for the ruin bars and its young, hip vibe. I loved everything about it. There is pop up food festivals, affordable restaurants and unique shops, something to discover around every corner.
At night, Pest is definitely the better place to be, not only because of all the entertainment, also because the view from the esplanade at night is top. Strolling along the Danube at night, looking at the brightly lit castle on the Buda side is breathtaking.
For dinner we found another great vegan friendly place close to our Hostel. It was called NapfĂ©nyes Ătterem and I pretty much fell in love with their rague.
More about my trip to Budapest, including a review on a visit to one of Budapests famous Spas in a follow up post!
Liebster Award
WohoooâŠI got nominated for the Liebster Award! đ Big thanks to Bernhard for nominating my blog. Of course I heard about the Award already and I always thought it a wonderful idea. Itâs an act of support and acknowledges fellow blogger and it also shows that you like the work somebody does on his or her blog. It is also a great way to discover new blogs and to find out more about the people behind blogs you like.
For me, it is a great honor to be nominated, since my blog is still in its fledgling stage đ
How does it work ?
The person (who was nominated for the Liebster Award as well) who nominates a blog can ask other blogger 11 questions, which they should answer in a blogpost. Following that, the nominee nominates another 11 blogger and asks them 11 questions as well. And so on and so on!
There are also some rules to the whole thing:
- Show some manners and thank the person who nominated you! đ Also, since boosting reach and networking is one of the main motivations for this award, add the blog link of the blogger who nominated you to your post.
- Answer the 11 questions you got asked by the person who nominated you.
- Nominate another 11 blogs you like for the Liebster Award
- Put together 11 questions for those blogger.
- Write down the rules for the Liebster Award in your post.
- Inform your nominees about their nomination.
Travel quotes that give me serious wanderlust
I can hardly remember a time in my life when I wouldn’t have been up for packing my bags instantly, board a plane and travel the world. But unfortunately… to travel you need money  and therefor, like most people, I have to spend an awful amount of time working and doing „serious“ life things.
BUT , this doesn’t prevent me from constantly dreaming, planning and looking forward to my next trip to ANYWHERE. â€
At times when my heart is especially restless, I love reading travel quotes, I have at least 200 of them screenshotted on my phone and a whole lot more in all of my notebooks.
So here are some of my favorites travel quotes! â€
Salento, the place to be for coffee lovers
I spent the first time of my stay in Colombia in the Caribbean region, I loved it,  but there was one thing that was a true disappointment  to me. The coffee tasted awful.
This might not be a valid reason to be disappointed for some people, but I am an official coffee addict and worshiper through and through. So, I almost gave up on the coffee-heaven Image of Colombia I had for so many years, but then… I got to Salento.
Salento itself is a gorgeous little town. It’s center is easily walked within one hour and the main plaza is always full of life. Be it school kids on their lunch break, backpackers waiting for the trucks to take them to the Cocora Valley  (Post on the Cocora Valley here ) or locals drinking their coffee and chatting for hours.
Right from the main plaza starts the busiest street in town  (which isn’t actually that busy at all… another thing I loved about Salento), there is a lot of shops, restaurants and bars lined up, so if you can’t decide what to do with your day , start off there and you will be entertained for hours.  This street ends at a staircase which leads you up to a Punto de Vista, where you’ll have an amazing view over the famous eje-cafetera region and of course beautiful Salento.
I truly loved everything about Salento, the fact that there is almost as many Colombian weekend tourist as gringo backpackers, the friendly people, who actually greeted us from day one and knew our names by day 3, the tours you can go on from there, horse riding to hidden waterfalls, biking, hiking the Cocora Valley, visit traditional Coffee farms and many more, the fact that I stayed in the most beautiful hostel Iâve ever seen, the amazing coffee everywhere and the millions of different shades of green.
Accomodation
The Hostel we stayed in is called âLa Serranaâ and it is located about 20-25 minutes of walking distance outside of town. It is surrounded by literally NOTHING but green hills full of coffee plantations and in the morning, when the fog is still lingering around the hills, you feel like you are the only person in the world. So peaceful . â€
They also have great common rooms, which are always full of guitar playing and storytelling fellow traveler and they serve amazing breakfast and dinner.
Coffee farm highlight
For me, a passionate coffee lover, going to the coffee plantations was a MUST DO. My friends and I decided to go see a traditional, organic one named Sacha Mama.
It took us about an hour to get there . We started at our hostel and the path  lead  us mostly downhill through the core of the Coffee zone.
Sacha Mama is a special kind of Coffee farm, with a lot of history and run by the same family since ages.
The lady  there went on a tour through her families coffee plantation with us, we learned so much about the traditional coffee making process and in the end we were even rewarded with a cup of amazing self-made Colombian Coffee, cookies and cakes.
For a trip to the Coffee Farm, you definitely need a whole day, since you are walking quite a bit to get there and even more going back (since it is ALL UPHILL ;PÂ ) and you should definitely take the chance to talk to the people who run the farm, they will answer all your questions and are really happy to meet people who are truly interested in coffee.
They also sell their organic, self-made coffee at the farm, which is SO MUCH better than the one you get in the stores… obviously! đ
LiLeeAnna on the move 