Day twelve. With this day we lost 8 of our tour mates and gained 6 new ones. It was bitter sweet, since we had really bonded as a group. And we were skeptical of the new additions to our group. We tried to get to know them, since thats what nice people do, but its hard.

Today’s lunch break was again at a gas station. This one had a really nice outside patio. Me and Andrew tried to sit with some of the new people to welcome them, and try to see what they were all about. The best part of this stop was the play set on the patio. We all got to play on the swings before we jumped back on the bus. The one thing that was annoy at this rest stop was that we needed to pay to use the bathroom. It was a dollar. Which is a little high.

We checked into our hotel mid-afternoon. This hotel was set back from the road, so we had to walk from the bus down the street to our hotel. But the hotel was new and clean. The walls were really thin in this hotel, so we were lucky that we had good neighbours. They also had a really cool playground out front for kids. It looked like a treehouse.

Our guide met us an hour later and walked us into the old city. We were given a quick tour to the centre of town, then Carly left us for a few hours to fend for ourselves.

We wandered the streets with our dinner-friends. Immediately we found a fountain with a man playing a guitar and wearing a donkey mask. At the same time there was a man with a bubble wand, going to town. So it was quite the magically, crazy, daydreamy scene. I loved that all of downtown had cobbles everywhere

We found some cute shops selling local artwork, antiques, and honey. There were a bunch of really cool gift shops with gifts I would buy for my friends if they were having a birthday. We spent a lot of time weaving in and out of the shaped down the cobbled streets. We found a book fair that was packing up for the day, and a wine shop giving out free samples. There were police on horses, and tourists on old fashion bikes. As we got back to the centre of town, it started to rain. A lot. None of us were prepared for rain, so we ducked into the first restaurant we saw.

It was a rustic Italian restaurant. The service was pretty rough. It took a long time to place orders, receive order, get bill, and pay bill. We wasted most of our time at that restaurant which was a bit unfortunate. However, we were able to dine with a few of the people who joined our trip in Budapest so it wasn’t a complete loss. Although we had to rush out to meet up with the group at 8 to go out to the pub.

It was still cold and rainy by the time we were to meet everyone, so we decided to duck into one of the department stores in the main square to get warm. That stored was so expensive. It was ridiculous. A pompom for your key chain was $79 US. A pompom. Sure it was a bright pink faux fur pom pom. But a POM POM.

I digress. Ten minuets later we were all wishing we had more money to buy anything in that store, and were heading out to meet the group for drinks.
We made our way with the group again at a small pub in town – and they had a large collection of scotch, which made two people on our trip very happy.

The big thing here was the scotch was cheap! Like 7$ CDN cheap! Which made me very happy.

I had an awesome time this night, we all had fun and were able to let loose and enjoy ourselves. We basically owned the bar! One group on our tour found a tiny local restaurant for their dinner, that served them free wine all night with their meal. Apparently the food was amazing. I was a little jealous that our dinner had been so passé. However all in all it was a great night with friends and spirits!