Adjusting

My body is still adjusting to the time change. I feel like it is six hours later then it actually is so by the time the girls go to bed I'm EXHAUSTED and I have been waking up at about 3am every day (although I don't get up until about 530). So no kid free awake time means no blogging but Kate is playing and Kendall is sleeping so instead of folding clothes I'm going to do a little post to ward off some of the threatening emails I have been receiving.

We really didn't leave enough time for Vienna, in the morning we went to see the Lippenzar (I know that is spelled wrong) horses then spent the afternoon walking around the city and then the public market. We were practically running back to the hotel to get our bags and make our train when we came upon some local kids. They were running as fast as they could to clock their speed on the speed detector/radar thing for the cars.

I thought it was so funny and we had to try too. Brian went first. My photography skills are seriously lacking so it took me five tries before I caught the speed (which was blinking) in the photo. Needless to say his speed,12 kilometers/hour, wasn't enough to impress the locals (he has also been training for the marathon...long distance training).

Seeing my opportunity and sensing a competition I ran full out and managed to elicit an "Ooooooooh" from the little kids when I put up a 20 kilometer/hour. Impressive if I do say so myself.

The last day in Budapest we started at Cafe Gerbaud. We got pastries and coffee. I'm not much of a coffee drinker so I ordered an Iced Coffee and out came this espresso with chocolate ice cream, whip cream and chocolate sauce to go with my breakfast cake. Here are the before and after shots. Note: This isn't all our food, Krisztina and Tamas were with us, ha.

After breakfast we went to the local market where we got a few gifts then we dropped Brian off at Margaret Island where he met a couple other guys to go running. It was cold and rainy, we gave him a hard time for wearing a garbage bag!

Next we went to the mineral baths and despite the multitude of speedos was actually a lot of fun. The hard part was getting out of the warm water to run through the freezing rain to the next pool or sauna!! Next we went to the Museum of Fine Arts. I could have spent all day here (a saw drawing of Leonardo de Vinci) one really cool part was they had a painting on the wall and then below it they had the "studies" or drawings they practiced before the painting of different faces...that was my favorite. But we had to leave because we had tickets to the opera. It was a great experience but kind of funny to be an American sitting in Hungary watching an opera written by a Spaniard sung in Italian with Hungarian subtitles. Needless to say we understood very little but Tamas explained a lot during "half time" (as Brian called it).

Afterward we went to the BEST Italian restaurant ever. It totally ruined me for any other Italian food. I'm going to try to recreate the soup (Roasted Tomato that had chunks of tomatoes and bread in it, so yummy) and the homemade tortellini filled with Asiago cheese with spinach and pumpkin creme sauce......oh my mouth is watering now.

Self Portrait entitled: Four Hours of Sleep on a Plane

View from our hotel room in Budapest overlooking the Parliament building and the Danube River

More pics to come later. I hear singing coming from upstairs so I think that the nap isn't going to happen today!