I'm a Sucker

Walking along Vaci utca, a very touristy pedestrian street that runs next to our apartment, there are all kind of things being sold:  hats, postcards, mulled wine.  When Tom and I were here in November we saw all kinds of cute hats and decided that we'd let the kids each pick one once we moved here.  And we told the kids this.  Keep in mind there are tons of cute hats.  My children did not choose any of those.  Instead they chose the fluorescent Russian ski bunny hats.  Yikes.  The bright side?  They're very easy to spot in a crowd.

Television Options

Let's just say they're limited.  Besides the Hungarian, French and German channels, we have EuroSport (in English), several newschannels and HBO2, which plays some English movies.  The kids have taken to EuroSport.  They know more about biathlon and ski jumping than most American kids, I'm sure!

Popcorn and tennis.  Perfect.



Our Pest Apartment

Welcome...

There are some things I love about our apartment, good ol' 953.  The location is killer.  It's right by the Elizabeth bridge on the Pest side of the Danube.  The architecture all around us is beautiful and we are within walking district of Budapest's Central Market.  It also has a rather crazy amount of storage for a two bedroom hotel apartment.  On the negative side....there's the kitchen.  My, oh my. 

 

Dishwasher?  Yes.  But that's about the only positive.  Tiny flat top 2 burner electric stove?  Yes.  Ugh.  I forgot to take a picture inside of the cabinet below the stove, which contains my two pans.  Two.  Pans.  And neither has a lid.  And they don't both fit on the stovetop at the same time.  Fun times.

 

The cabinets under my eat-on bar: (there's no dining area)

 

My carefully smuggled, I mean "imported", spices!

 

 

Takes me back to college, this fridge...

 

 

Looking out from the kitchen is this living area, then there's a bedroom with a bathroom on each side (sort of your standard Marriott hotel room).  Twin beds in the kids' room and a king in ours.

 

As happy as we are to have this, we will be oh so much more happy to be in our house and spread out a little...or a lot!

The Little Princess

I have to admit.  We thought "she" was a boy until I looked up the name of the statue!

 

Head Shots

I've been practicing with different settings on my new camera...so we have a lot of random pictures of ourselves!

 

 

The brown-eyed girl

 

Mr. Casual

The new specs...

And this one courtesy of Charlotte!

"Illy"

There aren't a lot of options for a quick dinner out where we live except for the ubiquitous KFC/McDonald's.  Aaah we dream of Qdoba.  :)  But next door to our hotel/apartment is a coffee shop that serves a few Hungarian dishes and also serves breakfast all day.  I have no idea the name of this place, but there's an Illy sign in the front window, so to the kids, it will always be called Illy.  They do serve a mean cappuccino!

 

Little bottles of juice come with all the meals.  A total treat.  Is it wrong that the kids pretended their juice was wine??

French toast basically as big as she is!

 

Did I mention they have desserts too?  Dobos Torte (a Hungarian specialty with layers of sponge cake, chocolate buttercream and a crunchy caramel top) is Charlotte's favorite.

Chimney Cake!

When Tom and I visited Budapest in November, one thing high on my list of local foods to try was the chimney cake  It is dough rolled onto a hot iron, baked over coals, then rolled in yummy things like cinnamon sugar or nuts.  It's like a non-gooey inside-out American cinnamon roll...not that I don't like gooey! :)  Anyway, the street stall selling them had closed by the time we got out of dinner on our last night, and I missed out on my chimney cake.  But on our very first night as a family in Budapest, we took the kids.  It lived up to all my expectations.  They're fantastic!