We started our first full day in Budapest with an alternative to Rick Steves's written tours (he doesn't offer any audio walking tours...yet): Ryan found a group called My Personal Budapest, which offers various themed tours. The specific tour we chose was a 9 AM to 6 PM "Hungarian Soul" exploration through aspects of what makes Budapest unique in its history, culture, and expression. András, our tour guide, was born and raised in Budapest and now lives in Buda, the hilly side of the Danube. Just opposite its banks lies the much flatter Pest, less residential and more industrial in nature. In the late 1800s, six cities—including Buda, Pest, and Óbuda ("north of Buda," so you can probably guess where it's located)—joined forces to create a single metropolis, which would be more prosperous and more resilient against invaders. (Unfortunate side note: It didn't really help for the latter purpose. More about that farther down this photo gallery.)

We met András in the Astoria district (pictured above), where he walked us through gardens, plazas, and historic streets. Buildings considered "historic" were only deemed such because the structures that had stood there before might have been hundreds of years old, but given that Budapest has been on the losing side of every war for more than 500 years, much of the city is comparably new. The siege of Budapest—a fight between the occupying Nazis and incoming Soviets—was the second-longest siege of any city during WWII, and it had immeasurable destruction and casualties to show for it; so as is the case in Warsaw, most buildings really stem from no earlier than the 50s.

Interestingly, though, if you ask anyone when certain structures or cross-Danube bridges were built, they'll only respond with their original dates of erection—mid-way through the 1600s, maybe the millennial celebration in 1896—but never with the true date that the structure was rebuilt. Each and every bridge between Buda and Pest was completely destroyed during WWII bombing, and yet everyone will insist that the bridges date back centuries. It's a desire to cling to Hungary's golden age of prosperity and peace, rather than dredge up yet another reminder of its sufferings in the last 100 years.

We made our way on foot to the edge of the Jewish District and onward toward Pest's Central Market, Nagyvásácsarnok.

This three-story market was yet another building (or bridge, church, or castle) constructed for Hungary's 1,000-year celebration in 1896, and now, 121 years later, it's a delightful mix of spices, meats, cheeses, fish, honey, spreads, local wine, Pálinka, Unicum, and traditional kitchen wares as far as you can see in any direction.

We sampled a series of Hungarian sausages, including a new favorite for both of us—sausage made from the hairy mangslica, a pig with such thick, curly fur that it looks like a faceless sheep.

I hate admitting that it's absurdly cute, because it's also absurdly delicious.

As tired of charcuterie as we were thanks to 10 days in Italy, we could've eaten our combined weight in these paprika-covered sausages.

From the market, we took a van to some of the city's farther-reaching destinations. We rode across the Szabadság híd, the Liberty Bridge, to Gellért Hill on the Buda side of the Danube. This hill houses a number of spectacles, including a chapel built into the side of the rock and an anti-war monument at the top of the hill, but our first destination was Gellért Baths.

One of the reasons the Romans were so quick to colonize Buda and Óbuda was the area's abundance of thermal hot springs. As early as 1550, the Ottomans started to build traditional bathhouses over these springs. Gellért is one of the more well-known bathhouses, built in the early 1900s and now featuring its own hotel and spas. Only a few days later, we went back to visit more than just Gellért's beautiful lobby, with its stained glass and mosaics.

We drove up to the Citadella for a fabulous view of Buda and Pest far below, then headed back down the hill (read: more like a mountain) to the Várkert Bazár, a mix of marble ramps and domed gazebos heading up to the Budavári Castle.

Back across the Danube, we walked through Sabadság Square near Hungary's stunning Parliament building, where we saw a statue of Ronald Reagan commemorating the downfall of communism and the Cold War. He has one hand stretched out in front of him, the bronze now discolored from the number of people who have stopped by to shake his hand.

And just down the square stood Hungary's last standing Soviet relic—an obelisk erected by the USSR itself out of self-pride for saving Hungary from Nazi rule. It would be impossible to decide whether Soviet rule was any better, given its plethora of assassinations, massacres, race-based concentration camps, executions of children who didn't comply with their socialist policies, encouragement of sons and daughters to spy and report on their parents...and the list never ends. The monument now stands as a relic of Hungary's dark past, but we had to wonder whether it wasn't a coincidence that the shrubs surrounding the monument are now so overgrown that you can barely see it. The square on which it sits was, until relatively recently, named some variation of "Russia Square" (and you can guess who named it such); the Hungarian government recently renamed it, dryly declaring that they would only change it back if Russia created a "Budapest Square" in return.

We then met a local historian in Central Café, which was built in the late-1800s and frequented by a considerable number of Hungarian poets, authors, and artists. It served as the perfect backdrop for an 80-minute history lesson on Budapest, starting with the Carpathian Basin's first known inhabitants many, many millennia ago. We went through Hungary's golden ages and wars, its extreme wealth followed by poverty in economy and land after the Warsaw Pact, and its occupation by one unwanted regime after another. This lesson was one of our favorite parts of the entire day, and helped shape how we saw and explored Budapest for the rest of our time there.

We were in sore need of a latte.

András then took us to Budapest's suburbs, where his parents live. They cooked lunch for us, including a delicious vegetable soup with paprika paste (and I loved the paste so much that I went right back to Central Market the next day to buy my own jar); small, hexagonal biscuit-like things that were flaky and delicious...

...shots of Pálinka (which made Everclear seem modest); glasses of Hungarian furmint wine; my favorite Hungarian dish, paprikás (small, gnocchi-like noodle nubbins with chicken in a thick, paprika-based sauce, sliced peppers, sour cream, and maybe a hunk of tomato)...

...and, for dessert, a layered custard with powdered sugar. As someone who likes neither custard nor flan, I loved this dessert.

András acted as an interpreter while we got to know his parents, who loved showing us photos from his childhood, and we were stuffed into a sleepy oblivion by the time we left at around 3:30 PM.

Our next stop was a dance and music studio near Pest's Astoria district, where we watched a music performance by a traditional Hungarian group of what they refer to as "gypsy music." The melodies have inspired Western composers including Brahms and Bartok, and we loved watching a 90-year-old cimbalom (almost like a dulcimer) in action.

Our tour ended at around 6 PM in the Jewish District, which has been taken over by a young generation of hipsters. Every shop, café, bar, and restaurant closely mirrored a place that Ryan and I would rave about if it were on Phoenix's Roosevelt Row, and unsurprisingly, the district was crawling with beards, tattoos, and local-only, non-sweatshop, farm-to-table clothing stores, recycled wares, and food trucks.

Our favorite stop that evening was a "ruin pub" called Szimplakert, which from the street looks like a foreboding, abandoned building that saw a less fortunate side of WWII. The facade is falling off, windows are broken or boarded up, and the entrance looks like a gaping black hole in a charred (i.e., from pollution) limestone frame. But a few steps inside takes you into a completely different world: There's a large, covered courtyard bordered by small room after small room, each interconnecting in a maze of quirky, cluttered, filled-with-antiques-no-one-else-would-ever-want details. Each room runs its own pub or wine bar: some are hookah joints, some sell craft beer, others only serve Hungarian wines, others have arcade games and bar activities. At the end of courtyard, the space opens up into a two-story outdoor area with steps to the second floor (more rooms covered in strange antiques and graffiti) and more outside bar options. People were sitting on ruined couches and inside antique bathtubs, others were sitting on top what might have been a stove in the early 1900s, and still others were perched on a kid's kangaroo ride, which might have been part of a carousel decades ago.

You can probably guess why this is called a "ruin pub," and given the fate of the Jewish District during both Nazi and Soviet occupation, it's unsurprising that hipsters have converged on these destroyed buildings to turn them into a symbol of perseverance and renewed life.

That single twist from darkness to perseverance was a major theme during our time in Budapest.