Pictures with PEOPLE in them!

Sometimes we* get to carried away taking pictures of the fantastic places we visit, and the interesting experiences we have, that we forget to take pictures of us, and the people we love.

St. Stephen's Basilica, and us. 

Alan, a constable, and two baby pandas.

The view of the Danube, my mom, and me.

Hero's Square from behind, and our behinds from... right on. 

The "mmm beer," shot. 

My mom, and the crowning or  baptism(?), of St. Stephen or St. Adalbert(?).  

This was supposed to be ladies striking a model pose.  Apparently Sonya has no experience in professional modeling. 

You can't tell that this is the Blue Mosque, but we look happy huh?

Scarfed up, inside the mosque. 

This is a "Look how big this column is!" picture.  All those busy tourists refused to go away.  Rude. 

Kinda scary, but the only 'cistern + us' picture we have.  

The "Little Golden Gate" over the Bosphorus. 

Standing in Europe with Asia in the background.  Planning to swim this in the summer.  Hard core. 

*Before Alan fake coughs and says "WE???" let me be the first to admit that he is the sole picture taker, because I don't know how to use his fancy camera, and because in my panic over dropping it, I don't change the settings back to automatic, and end up with a bunch of completely black and white pictures.

Istanbul: Spicy and Bazaar

Like the rest of Turkey, Istanbul has fabulous, huge, bustling, and loud markets.

The Grand Bazaar, the world's first covered shopping center, opened in 1461.

It consists of over 50 covered streets, and 4000 shops.  (We saw about a 1%, and managed to escape with most of our lira.)

Things one could easily do here:
Pray at one of many mosques.
Get a good scrub down at a Hamam.
Spend ALL money.
Drink countless cups of free tea.
Hone haggling skills while drinking said tea, and spending said money.
Have someone run all of your many purchases to your hotel for free (so that you can't use the excuse of having no more hands to carry merchandise).
Get irreversibly lost.

Something one can't avoid doing:  Getting verbally assaulted by all of the vendors vying for your attention and money.
Some of the more creative lines to get our attention:
"Everything in my shop is practically free."
"In my shop I have everything, except no customers" sad face.
"If you have lots of money that you're trying to get rid of, I can help you."
 And the weirdest:  "Espana? Italia?  Oh... American... generally bad customers." (Not sure what the goal was here... issuing a challenge maybe?  Unfortunately I'm not so patriotic that I felt like proving him wrong.)

Farewell Budapest

Our week visiting was so lovely,  thanks for the good times!

We'll miss your chilly air, your super efficient public transit, your appreciation of all things pork, and your truly stunning historical architecture.
We'll miss the lovely-but-brown Danube, and the charming bridges that cross it.  We'll miss your perfectly patina-ed statues, your hideously amazing fur coats, your eternal Tina Turner soundtrack, and even your begrudgingly-helpful-bordering-on-rude customer service. 

Budapest, you'll always have a place in our hearts.

Step Into Slovakia

The little city of Esztergom has a bridge that crosses the Danube into Slovakia.

Never being travelers to miss a chance like that, we marched over the bridge at sunset to a small Slovakian town promising little more than stunning views of Hungary.

We only had about an hour, so we decided to spend it drinking beer.  We headed to the first "pub" sign we saw, which lead us practically under the bridge to a "bar" in some ladies basement.  She welcomed us in and happily poured us some beer from her keg.  Four tall beers for 3 euros.  Pretty much can't beat that.

Thanks for the lovely time, Slovakia!

"Da Basilica"

Yesterday we traveled to Esztegom to see the first capitol of the Hungarian Empire, and the largest Church in Hungary.  My Mom studied the history of the town and gave us a walking tour as we went.

Knock Knock

Who's there?

View from Slovakia

As we're gazing upon it's magnificence, I ask my mom (the teacher) "Who's basilica is this?"
Mom: "Huh?"
Me: "What's this basilica called?"
Mom: (confidently) "Well that would be 'El Grande Basilica'."
Me: "Ha Ha, no really."
Mom: "Erin, this is THE BIGGEST. They just call it 'Da Basilica'."
Erin:  "Never mind I'll ask Alan."
Alan: "Yeah, ask me, I bet I know the answer.  What are we talking about?"
Erin: "What's this basilica called?"
Alan: "Oh yeah.  You know... It's St. Ubidubilus Basilica."

Real name: Basilica of St. Adalbert

Budapest day 5: Hella Cultured

You know what they don't let you do at the ballet?  Take pictures during the show. 

You know what you can do (or at least what they don't stop you from doing)?  Pretend you're a ballerina, and take pictures of your self at the ballet. 

You get a few weird looks, but that's just the face of jealousy.

 

  

It was a classy night.

Budapest Day 4: A city stroll

Mostly just photos for you today, walking around the city has made us tired. This is what yesterday's walk looked like...

First a walk down Andrassy "ut" ending here at Heroes' Square.

Ice Skating in the park, in front of the fake 700 yr old castle (it was actually finished in 1908).

St. Stephen's Cathedral, didn't get to see the light up mummified hand. 

Then a sunset stroll over the Danube. That's the Buda castle.

Erin is looking for real estate to buy, here's one option, notice the "szex shop" on the lower floor. Due to the holes in the wall and the overall run-down look I bet it's cheap. The view of the Central Synagogue might up the price a little.

All in all it was a Beautiful day...more to come tomorrow.

Budapest Day 3: I want to go to there

Budapest is so magical...

In a few days we'll tour the Fisherman's Bastion, which is reminiscent of a real life Disney Princess Castle.  I promise LOTS of pictures.

But today, we saw something entirely different, but just as magical: the real life Disney Haunted Mansion.

Duh-Duh-DUUUUUUMMMM

You know the kids at Disneyland?  The ones screaming, stomping and wailing "I WANT IT!!!!!"?  I became one of those kids today.  The Haunted Mansion has that power over me.

Re-enactment? Why not?

Setting:  Here

Erin: (freezes, drops jaw, points) I want to go to there!

Alan: (takes more photos, ignores wife)

Erin: (Tugs on husbands sleeve) LOOOOOK! That is definitely haunted, and I definitely want to go there. 

Alan: Why am I not surprised?  (Takes another photo, starts walking.)

Erin:  But... But... I want to. Hey! I bet it's for rent! We can go to an openhouse!!!

Alan: (Keeps walking. Probably rolls his eyes.)  

Erin: (Whines.  Stamps foot.  Balls up fists. Contemplates a full-blown tantrum.  Glances at mud puddle on ground. Re-considers. Begins to gain back some semblance of adulthood. Whimpers almost unintellegably...) I never get to do what I want.

End scene. 

Old houses. They do that to me.

 

*Note:  As is always the case, this story is completely factual and, word-for-word, EXACTLY what happened.  No exaggeration or dramatization.*

Budapest Day 2: I spy

So, as it turns out, pretty much all of Budapest is closed on Sundays.  But that didn't stop us from peeking around.  What did we find...

Something tall and pointy...

Little sprinkles of left over snow...

Hilarious facial hair...

Available property...

Rainbow coloured roof-tops...

Lots of bridges over the Danube...

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Buda or Pest, either way it's cold.

We made it to Budapest. Our hotel is on Castle Hill.

We don't know what these places are but we look forward to finding out.

A New Years Naked Surprise

Don't worry this is a fully PG post. I don’t have any pictures of this event, which you should be thankful for, but it probably looked like this…

Many of you read Erin’s Post about the Turkish Baths. As she recounted we were given a warning by our old boss, an all-around great storyteller, Rick Johnson and up to this point there has been nothing to incite the type of fear that Rick relayed during his PTSD episode. As you may have read in Erin’s plethora of posts last week, Our friends Danielle and Bryan were visiting and after Erin’s post they wanted nothing more than to go to the Hamam and experience some of that inappropriate touching Erin talked about. It was a great way to relax after our death-defying hike down the hill (Buck up Danielle!!!), or at least it would have been…

In her post Erin made a little footnote about wearing a bathing suit, an important part of the experience. So we advised our guests on appropriate apparel and we were off to enjoy our final event of 2011. All was going well, we went in to the sauna, then we were ushered into the marble cleaning room to wait our turn. The ladies were first and Bryan and I relaxed as we waited. When the girls were finished we took up our positions on the slab and got started. All was going well until it happened…The man placed a towel over my mid-section and started to tug at my shorts, like he wanted to take them off!!! On top of that he was pulling the shorts off with Danielle and Bryan still in the room, in fact I think they both got a view of my fully exposed thigh. Happy New Years friends, that is my little gift to you for the year.

If you read Erin’s post you will also know that I was hesitant to venture to the hamam after Rick’s glowing endorsement, and I usually spent most massages with a quiet voice in my head saying “Weird person is rubbing me.” It definitely was never relaxing. However, now through time I have been able to relax and enjoy the experience a little more. So imagine the volume of that “quiet little voice” in my head. Now it was screaming as loud as it could “DUDE IS RUBBING ME!!!” to make it worse he seemed to enjoy my discomfort way too much, he was singing songs and whistling away. His final move, the coup de grace, if you will, was the forced stretching in which he brought my knee to my chest, a view no body wants to see. There was a towel involved, placed very strategically, but that thing had way to much freedom to move where it wanted. 

 To quote Bryan:

“Who’s the slutty tourist now”

Playing Catch-Up

For many reasons blogging about our travels, and adventures is super important.  (So that we have something to look back on when our hair is white and out memories are starting to fade, and also so that our friends and family are both in the know and jealous.)  For other reasons, the blogging doesn't happen as often as we would like (OK it's just one reason: laziness). 

Anyway.  A  lot of wonderful blog worthy things have been happening, so I'm about to inundate you with posts.  Small posts.  Picture filled posts.  Posts with very few words.  I dare you to look at them all. 

Happy reading!

New Beard's Eve

OK that was a stretch. Sorry.

Beanie Beards.  Jealous?