For years now, friends and family have told us we would love Budapest. Gorgeous architecture, great food, cheap alcohol, what's more to like? We were planning on going two days, as Paul and I are very good at doing A LOT of things in a short period of time, but eventually decided on three days when we had to rebook our flight because Transavia changed the departure time of one of our flights to something very inconvenient (this was long before our trip would take place so it wasn't a big deal to us). In the end we were very pleased it turned out like this, because we truly loved Budapest. I could've stayed another week!

Budapest is a beautiful, beautiful city. I can't stress this enough. Absolutely stunning. To be honest I didn't really know what to expect as I didn't really know much about Budapest or Hungary in general. But I was blown away! Pretty much everywhere you look there's a building that's lavishly decorated with statues or ornaments. There's the dramatic gothic architecture, elegant art nouveau, baroque, renaissance, ottoman and islamic influences, it's all there - the makings of a beautiful city. I also thought it was pretty amazing that most buildings were in excellent condition.

​Fonciére (= insurance company) ​palace on the famed Andrássy út (avenue),  with a statue of Hermes on top

After dropping off our luggage at the hotel it was almost lunch time and we were getting pretty hungry. We opted for Karaván (Kazinczy utca 18), a wonderful collection of food trucks and food stands,

First stop was Lángos Máshogy, a lángos stand near the entrance. Lángos is typically Hungarian and is basically fried dough, often topped with garlic water, sour cream and cheese. Honestly, I'm alllll about pizza and flammkuchen, but when I saw pictures of these lángos, I didn't think I would like it. I know, super dumb, but the thought of uncooked crème fraîche didn't appeal to me and the super light cheese seemed it would be flavourless. I was SO wrong! I'm now convinced this is the BEST food to accompany a beer. Fried dough so crispy, garlic-y, the cheese not flavourless at alllll. Simple, perfect, fatty, cheap, hangover food. I'm totally not ashamed to say we ended up having this every day. This one was 850 huf.

Next up was this wonderful and dirty looking thing from Kolbice. A cone, made out of bread (!!), filled to the brim with different kinds of sausages, fried onions, cheese sauce, bacon, ketchup and mustard. Delicious! Also very good with beer, haha. 1590 huf for the works. 

We were already pretty full by now, but these burgers smelled so good (even from afar) we couldn't resist, haha. 

And obviously it was an awesome burger. Nice and rare, soft bun, lots of bbq sauce and chili mayo. Smoked bacon, cheddar.. I was so full, but this was so good haha! 1390 huf for a bbq burger.

I really loved Karaván! It got more crowded as we sat there, and the atmosphere was so nice! The food here is awesome, and you can try lots of different things. From traditional Hungarian to Italian to a paneer stand. There was also a stand that served Hungarian goulash in bowls made out of bread.
​Oh, we could just tell, we liked Hungary already!

A 4 minute walk from Karaván lies the impressive Great Synagogue of Budapest (also known as the Dohany Street Synagogue). It's one of the largest synagogues of the world! The building reminds of a cathedral, with some arabic influences. It's 3000 huf to get in, which may seem a little steep, but you also have access to the holocaust memorial park  and the Jewish museum.

I loved the interior, it's just so lovely and graceful. I'd never been to a synagogue, but this was a pretty good first experience ;)

Outside the synagogue there is a cemetery and the holocaust memorial. Seeing the dates alone made me very sad.

There's also a sculpture of a weeping willow, and the leaves are these metal plates with the names of some of the Hungarian Jews that died, Beautiful and sad at the same time.

Next up our list was the St. Stephen's Basilica. It was SO hot outside though, so we headed over to Gelarto Rosa across the basilica for some ice cream first. Gelarto Rosa makes the prettiest of ice creams!!!!! The ice cream was also delicious. My choice of flavours were salted caramel pannacotta, nutella and chocolate. The salted caramel pannacotta was especially good! 700 huf for 3 scoops.

The ice cream didn't cool us down enough, so we sat down at Platz for some refreshments before heading over to the basilica, hehe ;) Cocktails were cheap here! I had something with prosecco, cointreau and rum and it was only 950 huf.

After a cocktail or two we finally felt up to visiting the basilica. I just looooove religious buildings, and this is a pretty good specimen if you ask me :) Entrance is free, but like with most churches and cathedrals I always think people should donate some money anyway to preserve the buildings!

We weren't able to walk around much, as most of the basilica was closed off when this HUGE group of children (I'm not good at estimating things, but like, at least 100) came in, with their parents and families filling the rest of the basilica. We sat down in the back where there were a couple of benches open for tourists, to see what was going to happen. Eventually all the children started singing! Very cool, it made our visit to the basilica even more special.

After that we (mostly) took the elevator to go up the basilica, which gave us an awesome 360o view of Budapest. I think it was 500 huf or something, totally worth it!!!

Then we strolled along the Danube river. Everything in Budapest is so.damn.pretty.

We obviously didn't have enough to eat that day, so we went to Trattoria Toscana for a traditional Hungarian meal :') The menu was quite extensive, so I kind of doubted whether all these pastas were freshly made. ↑ was pasta filled with mozzarella, and it was excellent, so there you go. Paul had pasta filled with pear and ricotta, which seemed odd to me but was also really nice.

What better way to wash away all that food than with some more cocktails? We walked over to Kiosk, which is a restaurant/bar that also has an outdoor bar. Very cool and chill place!

Then, as we were enjoying our cocktails, it started raining horrrrribly haha. Time to call it a day! And what a day it was :)

On our second day in Berlin, we did some more sightseeing. Since I'd never been to Berlin, I definitely wanted to see the Berlin wall. We went to Bernauer Straße, because a huge chunk of wall (60 meters) still stands there.
The first thing that popped in my mind when I saw it was that I really can't imagine what it was like back then. The wall was still there not that long ago, you know? WW2 was over and all still wasn't alright in Germany. I thought of my hometown being torn into two parts and not being able to go to the other part, not able to see family and friends.. Crazy!

At Bernauer Straße there's a documentation center you can visit, a chapel and a memorial park with an exhibition to teach people more about the history of the wall and what it was like back then. 

This wall of pictures saddened me so much. To actually see the faces of people who died while trying to escape. Pictures of toddlers, babies. I just can't imagine. I really can't.

I also had to see the Brandenburger Tor of course. There was a man playing some sort of hurdy-gurdy music box in front of the gate. He was dressed in an old fashioned costume and very proper looking, but he had a face tattoo, which was a weird combo. It looked a little like this, so maybe the guy was just from New Zealand ;).

We had tickets for the adjacent Reichstag dome, but they were cancelled at the last minute. Boo.

From Brandenburger Tor it's a short walk to the memorial for Jewish victims of the Holocaust. It was very impressive. The rectangular concrete slabs reminded me of graves, and walking around it really felt like walking around a graveyard. The floor is uneven, so it seems the slabs are all more or less the same height, but you actually see people disappearing as they walk further into the concrete maze. 

We then headed back to Potsdamer Platz for some architecture. And shopping. Hahaha.

This is the Canada House (embassy etc.). It was designed by a mouthful of architects (Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects, Gagnon Letellier Cyr architectes and Smith Carter Architects + Engineers), but with beautiful result. They used different kinds of materials all from different regions in Canada, which I love. 

The building has a green roof, and (this is a bad picture, I'm sorry, I only brought my old compact camera) even a waterfall! It really is a nice place to walk through, pretty and calming.

Quick Starbucks break. At first glance that looks like a d, but when you look closely you can see it's actually a t and you know what that means right? The barista spelled my name correctly, without me having to spell it out to him first!!!! Christin is a more common name in Germany though, so maybe that's why he got it right.

Across the street is this pretty building by Gnädinger Architekten. It reminded me so much of those fancy stores in Tokyo, but it actually is a science center you can visit for free. The center represents the medtech company Otto Bock (a prosthetics company), so the permanent exhibition shows you all about movement. It's not suprirising that the façade of the building was inspired my muscle fibers.

We then went to the Mall of Berlin (is that a wordplay on Wall?) for some shopping and food. The mall is huge! It only opened in 2014 and it's 76000 m² worth of shops! There aren't any shopping malls in the Netherlands, so this was really nice.

We went upstairs to the foodcourt first, and opted for some nice, hearty German meals. I went for the bratwurst & baked potato with lots of sour cream. Yes.

This doesn't look like much, but it was a potato dish with cheese and cream and lots of veggies and it made you feel all warm inside. So good.

And there you have it, our two days in Berlin! So much fun. Of course there's still so much more to explore in Berlin, but I'm 100% sure I will in time. And remember: no matter how long I'm somewhere, there's alwayssss more stuff I want to do, haha!

Last year I was very spoiled. Not only did I get a daytrip to Milan for my birthday from Paul, my mom and her hub also gave me a mother-daughter getaway to Berlin! We went last December, so we could catch some of those wonderful Christmas markets <3. I'd never been to Berlin before, so my mom thought it was a good idea to take me there. Everyone always tells me I would love Berlin, so I was suuuuper excited to go! We "only" went for two days, but you know me - I make those two days worthwhile!

We arrived before noon and surprisingly were able to check in our hotel already. Up first: a Christmas market. Haha! We went to a couple of them actually, they're pretty much everywhere in Berlin (pretty much everywhere in Germany too, hahaha). I'll spare you all the other christmassy pictures, because.. it's February. But let me tell you that those christmas markets are amaaaaazing!!!

We walked to the Berliner Dom, but decided to have lunch at HEat restaurant at the Radisson first.  The huge aquarium in the atrium suprised me a little!

We sat down right next to the Spree river and had the best view of the Dom!

I had the tandoori chicken tikka, and didn't expect too much of it - but it was so good! The restaurant has an open kitchen, so I could see they used a real tandoor oven to make it. The chicken was so juicy and tender and the naan bread and sauces were so tasty. It was also very filling, I couldn't eat it all, haha. My mom had a "simple" pesto spaghetti with sun dried tomatoes, but she really enjoyed that as well. Prices were reasonable!!

We then stayed at Alexanderplatz for some hardcore shopping, mostly at TK Maxx (why is it TK in Europe and TJ in the US by the way?) haha. I was particularly happy with this blue dress that got me a lot of compliments over Christmas ;D I also bought allllllll the Ciaté nail polish. Hah.

I then took my mom for a shopping break and some damn good chocolate at the Chocolate Café at Fassbender and Rausch. 

At almost 100 years old, Fassbender & Rausch is a well established institution. They know their chocolate. At the Charlottenstraße they have a shop and a chocolate café upstairs. You can actually have dinner at the café, and they have all these chocolate inspired dishes, but we were here for one thing only.. The chocolate cakes! They all looked so pretty and sophisticated.

On the left is my "Maroni Mousse Sinfonie": chestnut mousse with kirsch, sponge cake and meringues. It wasn't too sweet,and  the dark chocolate so rich! A perfect little cake for the winter season. My mom had the "Mandel Nuss Karamell Sinfonie": almonds, caramel mousse and sponge cake. Also very good! Even though it had caramel in it, this wasn't too sweet either (my mom and I both don't like it when cakes are too sweet). They were 5,90 a piece, but I thought they were worth it!

We couldn't leave without buying some more chocolate. The shop downstairs is beautiful.They had all these Berlin landmarks made out of chocolate, and a bubbling vulcano, also made out of chocolate. Very impressive! I bought some chocolate sticks (Venezuela, 43% cocoa), because it was the cheapest I could find at €3,25 for 4 sticks of chocolate (40 grams each), haha. They also sell those sticks as "cigars" in these aweeeesome cigar boxes, but they were mad expensive. Oh, and at the cash register I figured out that if you like their Facebook page, you got some free chocolate! So I did that and got a free chocolate stick (Peru, 60% cocoa) haha. What can I say, I am Dutch and the Dutch like their free stuff :P I also got two free mini sticks, another Venezuela and one Trinidad that was 80% cocoa. Trinidad was extremely good.

Went to see the pretty Sony Center, and did some more shopping at the nearby Arkaden mall.  Christmas was coming up after all O:)

All that shopping makes you thirsty, so we headed to the Fragrances bar at the Ritz for some special pre-dinner drinks.

You enter this hall, and everything is black and the light is dimmed. A friendly waiter greets you and explains the concept of this mysterious looking cocktail bar: Every cocktail is inspired by and based on a fragrance!

What you see right here is actually their cocktail menu! You're able to smell all the fragrances and their seperate ingredients. You can also see what  main liquor is used, 'But,' warns the waiter, 'choose the cocktail because you like the fragrance. Don't choose the cocktail based on the liquor. A cocktail might contain mainly gin but not taste like gin, because they taste like the fragrance'. 

They have SO many cocktails to choose from (they have another room with more cocktail options). I think I smelled all the fragrances. I always always always have a hard time deciding when I'm in a restaurant or something, so this was pretty challenging for me haha. After making a selection of three fragrances, I finally decided on the "sensual" and "elegant" Black Saffron cocktail, based on the fragrance by the Swedish Byredo. 

Served in a black champagne glass, with a crispy (?!) raspberry on top. It was such a refined cocktail, subtle, delicate, and definitely tasted like the fragrance. Delicious Leblon cachaça with hints of raspberry, violets and rose. My mother had a cocktail based on a Guerlain fragrance, and it tasted like chocolate. Which was crazy and really good. I loved all the attention to detail here at Fragrances, even the glasses are amazing. Some cocktails are served in a little house, and one cocktail even has cotton candy on top (I did not like that perfume though)! We also got a huge bowl of salted popcorn.  At €16 a cocktail it's a little bit of a splurge, but the whole experience alone is worth it. ,

By now we were pretty hungry, so we walked a couple of blocks to Gendarmerie. It's a very cosy restaurant, and very crowded although by now it was 21:30.

I went for the pan fried Wiener schnitzel (of course..) - it was almost as good as the one I had in Vienna! It was accompanied by a warm potato salad, which was a little tart but very tasty.

Crispy and wafer thin, as it should be!

My mom had the calf's liver and mashed potato. I don't like liver, but tried it anyway (because you should always try everything!) just in case. I'm sad to inform you that liver is still not my kind of thing, but my mom seemed to like it ;)

So that pretty much sums up our first day in Berlin! The next day we did a little more sightseeing, a little less shopping. But there was also shopping.  Haha.