Linds and Ryan Travel

LONDON & BRISTOL UK As our Icelandic adventure of gas station hot dogs, hot springs and waterfalls came to and end, another began! We arrived at Heathrow and were a short subway ride from our hotel. A splurge night in the London city center, directly in the Piccadilly Circus. We had a view of the street performers from our room. The change from roughing it in the camper van to a fancy hotel in the center of London was pretty stark… and definitely enjoyable. Since we were in the theater district, we decided to book tickets for the Book of Mormon at the Price of Wales Theater. It was an evening of irreverent laughs! After the first night we changed into a “capsule” hostel where your bunk is fully enclosed with a curtain. It is a little more than a standard hostel, but way less than a hotel. We spent the rest of our time in London exploring the different shops and markets, walking around the Buckingham Palace and seeing some of the free museums. London ...

ICELAND For the most part of this post, we will let the pictures speak for themselves with a bit of commentary.  Of course, even the pictures do not do justice to the wide eyes we had. We arrived in Reykjavik around 10 am, being already used to the time difference, we had a leg up on all the other Americans. :) Lindsey and I decided a couple months ago to do Iceland the correct way--by camper van. We were swept into the glamour of driving anywhere and sleeping anywhere we wanted. It was still definitely the way to see Iceland (hostels and AirBnbs begin at about $120/night), but the “sleep anywhere” wasn’t as straightforward as we first thought. Iceland has had a HUGE tourism boom since they recovered from bankruptcy in 2008-2011. The island is small, with 400,000 residents in the entire country, In 2009 as they were beginning to emerge from financial crisis, they had 464,000 tourists visit. By 2016, there were 1,800,000 tourists and last year 2,400,00...

Buda & Pest We took the day bus into Budapest. Flixbus again, our favorite, :) the short daytime buses are not too bad actually. After we arrived in Hungary, we headed toward our hostel. A party hostel, ranked #1 in Budapest, with crazy reviews and a room called "Anal Room" (which we laughed about and were NOT interested in hanging out in for the record), this hostel claimed to party all day and all night with events, outings, and upon confirmation of your room you were consenting to shots, drinks, and fun at every breathing second. We were both excited to try out a wild hostel, since they have age limits and we are both approaching the cut off. Shhhhhh, lets not remind us of that fact. Well... It turned out to be tamer than we both expected since it is currently the off season, so our nerves and excitement weren't for much. There weren't people passed out everywhere and we never even saw a door for the infamous "Anal Room" (h...