Milan and Budapest

Who would’ve ever thought I would be flying to Italy on Thanksgiving day! Definitely not me!! 

Jamie, Susan, Anna and I headed off from Edinburgh to fly to Milan for the next few days. Spirits were high and pizza was on the mind. On our way to the airport I looked at my Apple Pay receipts which was disturbing because I spent a little too much money out at the club the night before.. hehe oops. So I spent the first part of our flight calculating how much money everyone owed me for the drinks I bought them and wound up feeling a lot better. 

We got to our airbnb in Milan pretty late but we were all starving so we had to go find somewhere that was open for us to eat. We found this restaurant and all inhaled pizza. I thought it was the best pizza ever because I was starving!

The next morning we woke up and headed over to the Duomo area. We went inside the cathedral which was beautiful and even climbed to the top of it. The view was very cool and we got some bomb photos. We then found a place to eat for lunch in the galleria and when I say this was the best pizza I have ever had. It was. Oh wow I couldn’t even believe how amazing it was. We spent the rest of the day wandering around a little bit in the shopping area. That night, we had booked a pasta making class at the home of a local through airbnb. This was a very cool experience! We got to make 3 different types of pasta and tiramisu (which I didn’t even know I liked!) We left with new knowledge and recipes. Making pasta is so much easier than I thought! It is literally just egg and flour. 

Saturday morning came around and Jamie’s flight home was super early, so I dropped her off to the uber at like 5am (not the airport, too early for me). It was sad to see her go!! We all know her personality is something else so it was fun to have someone so bubbly and excited about everything with us. Once I fell back asleep for a while and Anna and Susan got up, we went over to Lombardy, which is another part of Milan. We explored around and had some gelato (yum!!). Since the sun had not been shining at all in the past few weeks in Scotland, it was very exciting that the sun was actually out in milan. So we sat on a bench for a while and soaked in some vitamin d. That night, we went back towards the duomo area and went to a really yummy restaurant for dinner where I had delicious gnocchi. We went shopping that night and I couldn’t even believe that I was shopping in milan!! So crazy! We had more gelato that night (oops, had to do it tho!!!) and it was SO good. The one in the afternoon was okay, but this one was really something else. amazing. 

Duomo

Top of the Duomo

Pasta Class

Lombardy

Let’s move on to the next part of our wee holiday. We boarded a flight from milan to Budapest. Once we arrived, we went to a Hungarian restaurant for dinner (their food is pretty good). Although I had the grossest wine ever but oh well!!
Monday morning was my 21st BIRTHDAY woohoo!! I was so excited to have my special day!! It was snowing which the girls were excited about but I was like meh.. really wasn’t ready to see snow yet. We had such a fun day though- we went to a cool restaurant for breakfast (susan is so good at finding restaurants). After we ate we went to Széchenyi baths. They make it sound fancy by calling it a bath, but it is basically a huge public hot tub. But it was sooo cool and relaxing. Right next to the baths was a huge ice skating rink. Literally the biggest ice skating rink I have ever seen. We decided that we may as well go ice skating while we were there!! After skating we went out to dinner to another delish restaurant. That night, we had booked a pub crawl, so we went on that which was quite an experience. We did meet a couple in their 30s from Glasgow (another city in Scotland). It was really ironic that we met them! The wife even came to my birthday party in Edinburgh the weekend we came home! 

The next morning (which was not as rough as I was anticipating, yay) we headed over to the Christmas market. It was very cute and we all found Christmas presents- as well as presents for ourselves! We walked along the Danube river which was beautiful, especially because the sun was setting when we were there as well. We saw the shoes on the Danube, which is a very powerful memorial for people who died in WW2. The sunset was so beautiful !!! We hadn’t seen a good sunset in months honestly so it was so exciting and made me really excited to go home and see the sunset at the beach :) 

So this night we had booked a boat cruise on the river. The cruise was late, and to get on the boat we had to walk through another boat (which was very messy) that had huge guns out on the table?? It was so creepy. We wrote in a bad review (obviously) to tripadvisor and they completely shut it down saying that we were wrong. It was very weird. But anyways they gave us free mulled wine so what are ya gonna do!

On Wednesday morning, Anna had another flight to Barcelona and had to leave around 3am (huge L). Susan and I had to leave at about 5am so not even much better. Anna was continuing on to do some solo traveling, but Susan had a final on Thursday and I knew that that much traveling in a row would be too much for me to handle. Anna was gone for 11 days straight and she only packed in 1 backpack! Too much for me. Susan and I were on the same flight home as our pub crawl friends, and they were sitting in the row next to me! Small world. It was nice to finally get home and see Mary <3 she was missed by us on our vacation. As always.. #stayclassyscotland

Széchenyi baths

huge ice rink

shoes on the Danube

pretty sunset

river cruise views