My brother sent me a message last night with an acute observation – I didn’t seem to be enjoying myself too much on my trip.

Truth be told, these trips sometimes seem more like work than a vacation.

I think my planning for this trip was flawed as I’m racing from country to country every couple of days.

It’s just not enough time to breathe and relax.

As my trip comes to a close in just over a week I will take this observation to heart and make sure I approach my next trip differently.

Today, was actually a great day.

I had that new mindset and while I did another walking tour during the day, I did absolutely nothing at night and just relaxed.

And I needed it…these walking tours are killing me!

So…much…walking…

Today’s tour was well worth the walk though.

I went with Free Walking Tours (such an ingenious name!)  There were so many people in our group that it actually got split in three and we each had our own guide.

As we all stood there and the guides spoke at the start to introduce themselves to everybody, it became apparent which was the best guide and I made sure to saunter over to the left side of the crowd so I would be in her section when it got split up.

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Orsi, our guide, took us through both parts of the city – Buda and Pest (which is pronounced pescht by the way) over our 3 hours together.

We learnt about the long history of Hungary from the Ottamon empire to Communism to the country it is today.

One of the drawbacks to Communism by the way is that since everyone had to work and unemployment would land you in jail, people became complacent and unproductive in their jobs since they knew they were guaranteed work no matter what.

By the time the tour was over around 1pm I was actually pretty far away from my hostel on the other side of the river.

It took me almost an hour of walking to just get back to the hostel and by then I was hobbling along on my very sore feet.

So, I decided to take it easy and just relax at the hostel for the rest of the day.

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I did go out to the same restaurant I went to last night to have some goulash and chicken topped with cheese and vegetables.

And that was it – pretty simple day.

I think I kind of needed a day like this and as I look forward to my last week of my trip I’m thinking it won’t be the last one either.

Here’s to USSR Trip 2015 and counting down to my trip home just over a week from now!

USSR Trip 2015, Trip Journal

USSR 2015
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