Month: December 2015

It’s almost impossible to top Day One in Budapest, but there’s a lot left on my list to see and do. Since it’s another overcast day we decided to stay on this side of the Danube river and save the views of Buda for tomorrow. This place used to be two cities: Buda, the hills on one side of the river and Pest, the flatlands on the opposite bank, until they joined back in 18 hundred and something or other to form Budapest (pronounced “Pesht”).

We slept in again — the sun isn’t rising until about 7:30. Perfect for a relaxing vacation and such a nice break from home where the sun rises at 6 am even on the short days of December. Thank God for Josh who has been making breakfast for everyone before I’ve even opened my eyes.

After breakfast we headed out to the large market right around the corner from our house. Gorgeous displays of vegetables, cheeses and meats and magnets, potholders, gloves, and t-shirts that say things like “Communism is a party,” and any other tchotchkes you can think of branded with “Budapest” or “Hungry for Hungary.”

Since I was having second thoughts about my lack of layers, we stopped back by the house where chaos ensued — we are staying in an apartment with a code for the front door and of course everyone fights over who gets to input the stupid code. I don’t even know the code myself since one of the kids has done it every time since we’ve arrived. I’ll be locked out in the cold if they ever aren’t with me. Anyway, tears and fighting over the dumb code and threats to leave them at the apartment because they are ruining my vacation happened, but we finally got things worked out and instituted a ban on two particular children not being allowed to have contact with each other for the rest of the day.

We set out again for the metro and on our way to our first stop Josh made a new friend. A guy was promoting tours and Josh asked him where he was from because he could hear that he spoke English with an Arabic accent. He was from Tunisia and then he and Josh chatted in Arabic on the street corner until Josh could pull away.

We went to St. Stephen’s church, known for having a mummified hand of St. Stephen that sounded a lot more interesting than it was in real life. The church was huge and beautiful and ornate, all red marble and gold, but a bit strange because the main statue/sculpture up front was Stephen himself (not Stephen from the Bible, a different one) and all the areas to pay tribute to Jesus were off on the sides.

Anyway, the best part of the church was our hike to the top — round and round and round up a million steps and then coming out on the turret that surrounds the main dome, looking out over the roofs of Budapest. Amazing views, even through the mist.

 

After a short break we headed over to the Parliament building. Yes, it was a hike, but I wanted to see the river so we walked down toward the water and the Chain Bridge. Caleb had to stop and see if the lions really were missing their tongues (from Hannah’s Cold Winter — they are!) and then we walked down the river to the HUGE Parliament building.

Josh got tickets and we had about an hour so we went around the corner to grab lunch at a cozy cafe.

The tour lasted about 45 minutes and it was gold, more gold, long hallways, gold ceilings . . . lots of gold. All the gold that is overhead and out of reach is actually gold — the bits that are down low are paint.

Since we were on an opulent roll, we decided to walk over to the opera house to see if there were any tickets left for the Nutcracker. They’ve been sold out for months, but I wanted to see if anyone had canceled and turned some in to be resold.

No such luck. But the building itself is beautiful, gold leafed, and worth a visit. No more tours for us today though. Too tired.

We opted to walk up the street to the Alexandra bookstore and cafe to rest our feet. Hot chocolates and cappuccinos for everyone with live piano music and gold painted mirrors and ceilings. super fancy. If it seems that we are drinking our way through Budapest, that’s because we are. If we’re not stopping for coffee, it’s to fill our cups with some hot wine. It’s freezing here.

We headed home to warm up and grab dinner. We tried to go to one restaurant on our street, but it was booked with a party so Bob pointed out a pub a few doors down that looked interesting. We went in and had some comfort food — goulash, pickles, red wine and sweet crepes for dessert. 

Our first full day in Budapest we woke up with a week’s worth of activities, but where to start? We decided it was only fitting to go see the sight that cemented our plants to come to Budapest: the zoo. If it sounds strange that I’d choose a particular city because of a bunch of animals, this was about more than just some four-legged creatures. When I was homeschooling the boys, our curriculum used picture books as the base of learning — drawing lessons in social studies, art, language arts, science and applied math from the setting, characters, and plot of each story. A simple concept that has continued to pay off years later as even my high schooler still remembers the lessons he learned from “simple” children’s books.

As I was deciding where to go for this Christmas trip and browsing websites of various central European locations, checking out their “Top 10 things to do” lists, I came upon a photo of the Budapest zoo that looked vaguely familiar. Then it clicked — one of our school books was based on a story about Budapest during WW2 and the cover of the book was a drawing of the zoo entrance. It was meant to be. We were going to go to Budapest to visit Hannah ourselves.

We got off a stop before the zoo so we could walk through Heroes’ Square which is important for some reason, but like I said in a previous post, if it didn’t stick in my head during the research process, it’s just a place to see and experience and enjoy for its beauty. It’s a huge square with a lot of statues and it reminds me of the square near our apartment in Paris — guys on horses, weathered to a pale green Lady Liberty color.

We arrived at the zoo, I handed Carter the map and he brought us straight to the Hippo House. It looks just like the illustrations from the book. The story takes place during WWII and is about a special hippo named Hannah that opens her mouth wide for food every time the family goes to visit. (It’s also about how the city worked to save their hippos during a bitter winter of German occupation by feeding them straw mats, slippers and hats that the townspeople collected.)

We walked into the beautiful, ornate, mosque-styled building and there were the hippos. Was it Hannah? One hippo was submerged, but the other heard us call her name and she swam right up to us and opened her mouth! Caleb yelled, “It is Hannah!”

It felt a bit like preserving the myth of Santa Claus as the older boys said, “No, it can’t be. She’d be dead by now.” I said, “I think hippos live a long time, like as long as people. Maybe she was a baby back then and she’s an old lady now . . . ” (I have since learned that although hippos do live a very long time, 40-50 years, they do not live for 70 years. But I’m only telling him if he asks.) Content with that explanation, Caleb glowed that he was face to face with his storybook Hannah as she kept opening and closing her mouth, waiting for food. It was a magical moment.

This article explains a bit more about why this zoo is unique: Budapest Zoo

After lunch it was time to hit the baths (ornate yellow building). A must-do when visiting Budapest. One of the reasons the hippos thrived in the Budapest zoo is because the city is built on top of thermal hot springs which provided plenty of warm water for them to wallow in. There are spas all over the city that boast healing hot baths in both outdoor and indoor pools. The water comes out of the ground at about 70C/170F and it is mixed with cooler water to create pools ranging in temperature from around 25 – 40C (from 80 to 100 degrees F — too long overseas and I’m starting to think in Celsius!)

We entered, got our wristbands, then navigated the co-ed locker room. There are individual changing closets and then everyone uses the same locker room to store clothing. It was a bit jarring to see women and men walking around the locker room together wrapped in towels, robes and swimsuits, but that’s just because we rarely even see knees where we come from.

We got everyone changed over — thanking God I didn’t have my babies in cold climates. Wrestling with jackets, tights, layers, gloves and hats all day long is not my idea of a good time. At least at 5 Camille isn’t totally helpless, but it’s still on-off, on-off, hold my gloves, my head is hot my head is cold, where are my gloves, all day long. We entered the baths and went right for the hot pool. At 101 it wasn’t burning hot, just perfectly warm and soothing. We also tried the one across the way that was 95 degrees, but it was a bit chilly, so back to the hot pool for all of us.

My kids are excellent travelers. They may drive me crazy when they are tackling each other in the morning instead of getting dressed or when they swear they didn’t hear me ask them to take the clothes out of the dryer and fold them (both of those were this morning), but take them to a spa with a bunch of adults and they all sat and soaked just like all the 70 year old men. God bless them. Of course I reminded them that this was a spa and not a pool for swimming and splashing before we entered, but they figured it out and played along.

After some time in the indoor pool it was time to brave the cold and head outside to the ultimate hot tub. Steam rising, hot jets flowing from below, a warm fountain spraying from above . . . I think we stayed for an hour, moving from area to area around the giant pool, watching the old men playing chess (on the board that was in the pool), debating whether the statue was of a naked lady nursing a goose or if the goose was just nuzzling her armpit (really, European sculptures are weird), and taking a break from the hot water to do a long, freezing cold lap around the entire perimeter of the 3 pools before hopping back in to warm up again.

We stayed until after the sun set and then headed back inside to change over and take the metro home to grab dinner in our neighborhood.

I’ve written about this before, but one of the things I hate about traveling from here is that we only shift an hour or two in time zones, but we always have wicked jet lag because we have to travel in the middle of the night. Really, all the flights to go anywhere other than Dubai or Oman leave between midnight and 4am. This flight to Budapest was scheduled to leave at 2:30 am — not enough time to go to sleep before our flight, but enough time to sit around and get sleepy while Camille cried, “Can we go now?” 50 million times starting around 3 in the afternoon. She’s very excited about the trip except for the skiing part.

Meels chatting with Josie before we head out — probably showing off her toenail polish. Josie stays at our house whenever we travel and takes care of the pets. She makes our lives so much easier!

Caleb crashed before we’d even left the house. We’re in for a long night . . .

 We headed over around 11:30pm so we could get checked in and try to rest in the airport lounge. I figure because of the way the flight is broken up into 4 hours and 2 hours (with an hour layover in the middle) no one is probably going to get more than an hour or 2 of sleep all night.

Several hours later, up up and away to Budapest! This two hour fight was a smooth one except for the very end when the pilot was coming in for a landing and then changed his mind and shot back up into the sky. He came on over the loudspeaker and said there had been a sudden change in weather so he was going to try again for “a good landing.” Yes, yes. I’d definitely prefer that. As we were looking out the window and kept getting lower and lower, I was waiting to break through the clouds to see the ground. And then I saw the lines on the runway about 15 feet below and we touched down before I could even blink. Zero visibility on that one. Nice job, pilot.