Hungary

The last day and a half of our vacation was spent in Budapest. Originally we'd planned a day more there, but we ended up staying in Zagreb 24 extra hours since we'd lost Sunday and Monday to Jesse's flu. In any event, Budapest, like Zagreb, was a destination totally and happily motivated by friendship. It was so wonderful to spend time with Jay, Teanna, and the girls! Although Jesse had run into them a few years ago during a travel snafu that got him briefly marooned in Budapest, this was the first I'd seen them all since 2003, in Sofia, Bulgaria.

As we drove up the gravel road to their home on Wednesday afternoon, this awesome sign was waiting at the house gate:

(William had wowed Teanna with his dance skills via Skype that morning...her first introduction to him. Ha!)

We felt so welcome so immediately; it's impossible not to with Teanna and Jay.  :)  William also instantly made friends with the resident furry member of the family. She's only looking docile in the picture below because she was spent with the wild running and playing she and William had been doing for the previous hour!

Another reason the boys were in heaven? One of the girls dug out a Wii!! Josiah and Will have been missing their Wii Sports and Mario Kart since last July, and they could have happily sat in the living room the full duration of our time in Budapest.


Fortunately for them, we had planned to lay low the balance of the day on Wednesday anyway, because Jesse was still feeling a little fragile. He went to bed around 7:30 p.m. and slept almost 14 hours! But Thursday was perfect for a day out. Jay and Teanna showed us the Jewish Quarter of Budapest, in particular the spectacular and historic Dohány Street Synagogue. It's the second largest synagogue in the world, following only the Temple Emanu-El in New York.

Before we entered, Jay and Teanna helped the boys do one of those crank-a-coin memento things, which apparently has been a tradition with their own four girls. The boys were thrilled!

The synagogue was absolutely beautiful, and the history was moving and painful. Half the Jews of Budapest—thousands upon thousands—perished during the Holocaust.

The gravity apparently was lost on one member of our party...   

Later on, we walked around and enjoyed street vendors and the sights and sounds of the city. We especially were taken with the local specialty called kürtőskalács (pronounced something like koo-too-shko-lach?)...or...more easily just called chimney cakes! We watched men roll out long snakes of dough, wrap the dough around wooden forms, roll and flatten it in sugar, and then twirl the batons over a fire until they were golden and crackly and caramelized on the outside, soft and puffy inside.

Teanna treated the boys to a cinnamon sugar one. If she wasn't a friend already, she sealed it there!

All too soon it was Friday morning and we had to hit the road. It was sad to say goodbye after such a quick reunion, but the boys made me and Jesse promise we'd be back for another visit one day, in fact no later than "when William is 7 and Josiah is 10."

Jay and Teanna indulged me in an early-morning photo as we were heading out on Friday. Thank you for everything!!

*  *  *

By Friday night, at the end of a very long travel day, we finally were home. After leaving Jay and Teanna's that morning, we drove the teeny rental car back to the Budapest airport, then caught our flight from Budapest to north of Paris, then took an hour-long bus shuttle into downtown Paris, then took two different metro lines to get to the main train station, then took a high-speed train to a city in our region, then boarded a regional train to our town, then hopped in our own car and drove the 1.5 km to our house. Getting on and off of trains and up and down endless flights of mobbed subway stairs with two kids and our gear was a test of endurance, strength, and patience, but we made it! (As I've joked with a few people, maybe one of these days we'll choose to do the most convenient thing instead of the most economical, eh?)

Josiah was great in managing his bag. William was...less so (although to be fair, he did his best most of the time). We tried to pack lightly but it wasn't easy given that the trip was 11 days long in varied temps and with varied activities planned. It was adding the two car boosters and the stroller that did us in. But we made it and have lived to tell the tale! 

After hours of flying, busing, and metro-ing, the baguette sandwiches we finally had to time to buy at the train station in Paris tasted phenomenal. It was well after 3 p.m. We inhaled those things!