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January 23, 2005
Vienna and Budapest
Whew, finally a minute (or hour) to upload all the pictures! We had a great time, the guys complained bitterly about having to leave, which is highly unusual for them. Jake was sorely disappointed that there was no snow. I hadn't realized how far above the Alps Vienna is.
We left our house at 4 am (why oh WHY do all my vacations start before the sun rises?). One thing I like about taking an organized tour is that once my butt is on the bus, I don't have to worry about anything. Much good. The tour seemed to be half the hospital staff, the tour guide was even the wife of our Respiratory Technician. This is why I can never pick my nose in public. We had absolutely no trouble getting to Vienna and by the time we got there, we had made friends with most of our companions. The first day we just crashed. When we woke up, we found out that the hotel cooked a traditional Austrian dish each night. This was alright with us and we did not miss a meal.
The next day, we spent seven hours touring Vienna by bus and by foot. I put captions under the pictures so I won't bore you with the details. One thing I am constantly amazed by in Europe is that they live with tremendous man-made (and natural) beauty all around. In the U.S., you have to really dig to find the good stuff. In Europe, most towns are centered on fanstastic architecture and most everything built has to agree. It still freaks me out to walk into buildings that are 800 years old.
The next day, we had a choice of Salzburg (to do the Sound of Music tour) or a tour of Budapest Hungary. I wanted to do both but they were both unavailable on the only other day off we had. We decided that Budapest sounded more exotic and I can't tell you how glad we are that we did that. Budapest is NOT a city you can see in a few hours. You need at least two days for just that city. Hungary has recently become a member of the European Union but the details are still rough. The borders are still not open as the rest of Europe, so we were excited to FINALLY gain a new stamp in our passports. All EU countries have open borders and it is like crossing state lines in the U.S. Great for them but boring for our passports. Anyway, the other cool thing was that we got to experience money other than the Euro. Hungary still has the Forint. I had to go to the ATM machine there and withdraw Forint. My choices were 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 and 50,000. Anyone else feel a bit uncomfortable withdrawing 50,000 of anything out of their account? It turned out to be about 200 U.S, dollars and at the end of our two hours of free time, I sold most of it back for Euro.
On our final free day, we went to an enormous zoo. I was curious what happened in the winter months as all the water was frozen over the day we were there. They simply shuffle the animals into big green houses which are kept very hot. We kept putting on our hats, mittens, scarves and coats and then taking them all off again. We made up cool sign language that allowed us to buy roasted chestnuts, which are very good for warming up your belly when it is below freezing. Later that day we managed to negotiate the metro (try reading a map when you don't even know enough about the language to separate destinations from directional words!) well enough to get us to "Holiday On Ice". This is the European verison of "Disney On Ice". We discovered it because one of the girls that went with us to Budapest had a friend skating in the show. It was fantastic.
The whole time we were gone, we spent maybe two hours a day awake in our hotel room. It was that action packed. They guys did discover a couple of cool Austrian and British shows that we don't get here though. I had to guard the channel surfing because there was a channel for hard core porn, free for the looking! Italian tv is sometimes risque, but never THAT much.
Sadly, the next day we left and despite a pending airline strike, made it back home without a hitch.
Here are all six pages of pictures. Please click on the first one and then move forward with the larger pictures so you can better see detail.
Here is a neat website (I just might order this magazine!) that tells of a children's trip to Budapest. They have many more pictures than I do and I highly encourage you to go look.
Posted by DebC at 02:26 AM | Comments (4)
January 12, 2005
Ciao!
We are leaving in a few hours to see if the hills really are alive with the sound of music and maybe find a few of our favorite things while we are at it.
Pictures and hopefully trouble-free trip notes when we return.
Posted by DebC at 10:05 PM | Comments (5)
January 09, 2005
Good Clean Fun
Seth is now the proud owner of two crowns (on his teeth). He had a dental appointment a couple of weeks ago that showed some fairly serious cavities on his back two molars. He also has two tiny cavities in his front teeth. I am very glad these are his baby teeth but I am nervous about his future teeth. My two older boys have inherited my straight, fairly cavity free teeth but my luck ran out with Seth. He also has two bottom front teeth that are fused together. Anyway, he was amazing at the dentist. Well actually, I should say the dentist was amazing to him. He looked so tiny in the big dental chair but both the dental tech and the dentist could not have been more kid friendly. They let me stay in there with him for the hour long appointment. We decided to try laughing gas and local anesthetic to get the fillings done but that we would stop and reschedule it for general anesthesia if he didn't tolerate that. He didn't flinch an inch! I was so proud of him.
Kim now has a new torch and a kiln for her glass beads. You can see a few of her beads here.
Mt Etna sent up a gigantic plume of ash yesterday. We got a warning to stay inside because the ash is terrible for your lungs. We had been gaga over the gorgeous pristine snow sugar coating the mountain and now it is black and gray. I forgot to take a picture. If you get a chance and a hankering, go check out the rest of this guy's album of Mt Etna's recent antics - some gorgeous shots.
Jake's birthday party was today. Whew. Boy birthday season is finally over. There is an unlimited supply of boys on our street alone which means that it is not possible to have less than twelve kids at a party. I lost count but I think there was twelve or thirteen today. For the birthday craft, we felted soap. Whaaaaaa, you say? It is a way of taking fiber, wrapping it around the soap and then rubbing it in water until it turns to felt. We had a blast. Plenty of pictures in the photo gallery.
Posted by DebC at 10:35 PM | Comments (2)
January 03, 2005
Have you smiled today?
Got this in my email today and while it is total fluff, it made me smile.
Have you smiled today?
Let us show you how . . .
Posted by DebC at 03:07 PM | Comments (1)
January 01, 2005
Buon Anno 2005!
We wimped out of the Polar Dip that we did last year (hey, it's legit - we all have colds) but decided to go sledding instead (what, a little cold, pah!). We ended up in a caravan of neighbors up to Mt Etna. We didn't get to go sledding because the upper road was too slippery but we did get to play in the snow for about 3 hours. We were wet, happy and exhausted when we were done. I put up a bunch of pictures in the album. The captions tell the story.
I hope everyone had as much fun as we did and I hope everyone has as interesting a year as we plan. 2005 is shaping up to be a very big year for us: Austria, dad visiting Italy, Greece (hopefully), buy my first house, retire from the Navy, move back to the States. Yup. Busy.
Happy New Year!
Posted by DebC at 06:14 PM | Comments (3)