A Tale of Two Cities

We picked the girls up from school and loaded them in the car.  After driving for about 7 hours, with five separate stops- one time to pick up the sticker to use Slovakian toll ways, one to get gas and pee, another to pee on the side of the road not an hour later, one to have dinner, one to pick up a sticker to use Hungarian toll roads and, not an hour later, one to pee - we arrived in Budapest.  It sounds horrific but it wasn't too shabby, considering we were travelling with still small children.

Needless to say, we arrived late enough that we didn't really get to take in our surroundings.  We headed straight to our rooms and slept.  It was past some of our bedtimes (ahem, mine)...We all slept in and had a leisurely morning, after all, we had no real plans for the day.  B had to work (in fact he had been in Hungary all week and we were just meeting up with him) so we thought we would just wander around and see what we saw.  We didn't want be to miss the fabulousness that is Budapest because, even though he travels there for work quite often, he doesn't have the time to sight-see.

We headed out, umbrellas' in hand (it is Spring in Europe after all) and stumbled upon some great places in Pest*.  Yep, we stayed on our side of the Danube for today, but we used it as our compass.   We headed towards the river and wandered the beautiful streets and side streets...

And we ended up on Váci Street, one of the most famous streets in all of Pest.  We walked it from end to end, stopping to play in the rain.

We all needed to warm up a bit, so we popped in to dry off, grab a mid-morning coffee and for MadHatter to take some pictures...

Refreshed and dry, we headed to the one spot we knew we could go to that would not make B's list of things to do- the Great Market Hall.  I have written before on my love of Markets, and B's dislike of them.  Today was the only day I was not going to be rushed through...

Look at the size of those onions (Nana's hand for reference) but most of all look at the radishes.  They are the sized of her hand.

 Back outside, the rain had stopped and we were getting hungry.  Time to look for a place to eat.

But not at this place.  Fatâl must be a marketing nightmare for a restaurant.  We found a great place just a couple of doors down to have a traditional lunch.  And then found an even better place for gelato.

It was time to start home as it was time to meet B for drinks and dinner.  On the walk home we had to stop at this church, MadHatter insisted, and we were glad she did.  It turns out that that it is one of the oldest churches in Hungary, and still beautiful.

It had been a long day.  We had covered a lot of ground, most of it soggy.  We were all up for a meal of comfort food and some beer.  And perhaps an after dinner drink...

Hungary produces a wine called Tokaji.  Like Champagne, Tokaji is a wine produced in the Tokaj region of Hungary.  It is a sweet wine, produced by grapes infected with noble rot (a grey fungus).  There are only 6 types of grapes approved for use in production of Tokaji - Furmint, Hárselevü, Yellow Muscat, Zéta, Kövérszölö and Kabar - which are grown on a small plateau near the Carpathian Mountains.  And have been since about 1630.

The wine is rated on its sweetness.  Each bottle has a number of puttonyos ranging from 3-6 and the number is directly related to the sweetness of the wine.  Three is sweet, six is really, really, really, really sweet.  Puttonyos (or buckets) originally refered to how many buckets of noble rot infected grapes were added to a dry wine.  The more buckets that were added the sweeter the final wine.  We have passed the days of counting by buckets, so now the number refers to hos much residual sugar is in the wine.  Three puttonyos means a minimum of 60 g per liter of residual sugar, six puttonyos has a minimum of 150 g per liter.  And if that isn't enough sugar for you, there is a bottle marked "Eszencia", which is made entirely from affected grapes (called aszú) which is much sweeter and among some of the rarest and most expensive bottles of wine in the world.

Our menu was translated into English and had an unfortunate translation of puttonyos...

We tried the 6 Butts...

She slept until desert came.

A great first day in Pest.

*The city of Budapest is actually two cities, divided by the Danube River.  Through the years, the boundaries of the towns have blurred and Buda and Pest have merged into the city we now call Budapest.  When you visit, you will still definitely hear people talk about this site being on the Buda side or that one being in Pest.

Seeing the Sights

Between our trips to Ikea and Hornbach to pick up a few things to get the house in order (yep, Nana and Grampa flew all the way to Prague and ended up at Ikea), hanging pictures/mirrors/ledges and putting together said Ikea purchaes, and somehow still fitting in two trips (to Budapest and Vienna), we still found a few free days for sightseeing in our own backyard.  

We walked the city (from Wenceslas Sqaure all the way back to the house - about 5 miles), took in a day trip to Karlovy Vary, spent an afternoon at the bowling alley, and even found a place to do chocolate shots.  We watched glass being etched, we toured our way around a working castle (the largest ancient castle in the world), and we spent some time in the Jewish Quarter.

It was accomplished in fits and spurts, but I think we all got a really good insiders view of Prague.  And of course we hit all of the touristy things that are musts.  I snapped a few pictures, but not as many as usual because I already have pictures of some of the places we visited.  A few...

Chocolate Shots

Retrieving the ball that wasn't pushed hard enough...

This time we told her to use all of her strength.

Easter in Prague

Somehow, every time we move, Nana and Grampa seem to show up and it happens to be Easter.  It happened in California, it happened in Santiago and, you guessed it, it happened here in Prague.  Not that we are complaining.  We spend so many holidays without extended family around, we relish the times they are.

We woke up Sunday morning (Easter) and realized that the Easter Bunny had visited and left us some treats.  Those included Peeps, which we had never had before, since we left the US before the kids could eat them.  First things first, we had some Peeps, at 7 am.  Parent of the year here!

And then we waited patiently for the jet lagged among us to wake up.  I mean, they waited so patiently, I watied not so patiently.  Finally, everyone was up and we could open presents.  Presents that included a singing and dancing Olaf, and a new Frozen book...

But enough of that.  It was time to head out in the back yard so that we could find the eggs that the Easter Bunny left us.  Mama told us that the Easter Bunny left her a note saying that there were 18 eggs in the yard.  Off we ran to make sure 18 were found...

And, when we wen to count them all, we realized that we were one short.  One that was not to be found for the next 3 weeks as it turns out.  But, more disturbing than that, we realized that the little sister had found more eggs than the big sister...this was not a happy discovery.

We had all worked up an appetite and had a very European breakfast of meats, cheese, bread and sausage.  And then realized that we still had not colored the eggs that had been boiled a few days before.  We needed to remedy that situation ASAP...

Eggs found.  Eggs eaten.  Eggs dyed.  I think we had enough eggs for awhile.  We all prettied ourselves up and headed out to do some sightseeing.  Yep, even on Easter, Prague is open to the masses.  We headed straight to the city center, knowing that it would be teeming with people on Spring Break, wanting to see the same sites we were headed to see.  We didn't care.  We had no real agenda, we just wanted to spend the day in the sunshine that is so rare in Europe on a Spring day.

A Tim Burton festival was in town.  MadHatter is a fan, so she and B entered the festival while Nana, Grampa, Stinkerbell and I  wandered the square.

Handpainted, real, handblown eggs.  They were spectacular.

Stinkerbell crashed right after lunch.  As always.  It was a big day so I don't blame her, but she did miss the candy making...

 And the cross at the Charles Bridge...

She woke up just in time to see one of the World's Most Unintentionally Terrifying Statues...the second on the list that we had seen in just two days (the first was the crawling babies with no faces at yesterday's Taste of Prague).  Strangely, Prague has 3 of the 14 statues listed...

Yep, this is the Czech Republic, being peed upon by two male statues with moving penises, peni, penis'?  What is the plural of penis anyway?  And not to be outdone, you can text a message to a number and the penis will pee where you ask it to, for a small fee.  Yep, this is where we moved...

And then we headed to the river.  The Vltava separates the two halves of Prague and at some places you can get thisclose to the swans to feed them.  So we did, at MadHatter's request.

And then we headed out for turtlenecks.  Or as the Czech say Trdelnik...Say that fast, it sounds like turtleneck, doesn't it?  So that is what we all called it for the duration.  These sweet treats have always been a favorite of ours, and now they are absolutely a favorite of Grampa's...

 

And then we headed home.  We had a puppy that still wanted a walk (even thought we had walked miles already that day).  We headed to our favorite park - slide park.  And we took turns sliding...

Fetching...

And pedaling...

What a great way to spend Easter Sunday!  Or any day for that matter.  Can't wait to move and do it all again.