Day 1-2: But First New York (November 10-12)

Jim, Julia, and I planned to spend the week before Thanksgiving visiting Rachel in Budapest during her semester abroad.  The plan was to spend Wednesday to Wednesday with her and then fly back home through Atlanta for Thanksgiving, but when I realized that Jim would be spending his birthday weekend on a reunion weekend with Brown friends in LA, I decided to take advantage of the extra time to see Julia in Brooklyn and having a few extra days in Budapest with Rachel before everyone else arrived.  I arrived on Thursday late in the day and we went for a nice dinner outside. 

Liz and Julia in Brooklyn

Meanwhile in LA

Friday, she and I went for a walk in the morning and then to an exercise class at her gym before the rain hit.  I tend to get really bad weather when I visit New York and today was no exception.  We headed to my favorite Brooklyn cafe Nourish to work for the afternoon.  In the evening we doubled-dated with Natalie and Daniel (Daniel/Julia & Liz/Natalie) for dinner followed by the delightful Broadway musical Kimberly Akimbo.  

When we got home I realized that my flight to Budapest the next night had been canceled and they rebooked me on a flight in the middle of the afternoon. I checked to see what I could get for a last-minute flight to Budapest and was able to rebook a much better flight for the next night and save $100 in the process! Saturday was just beautiful! We walked through the Farmers' Market and went to a spin class at Julia's gym. We saw Daniel for lunch and then went shopping for a jacket for Julia. We still had time to get mani/pedis before heading to the airport hours early (just how Julia likes it). Julia headed to London to work for a few days and I headed to Budapest to see Rachel!

Day 3-4: Just Liz and Rachel (November 13-15)

 After a long day of travel, I arrived in Budapest Sunday evening and took a car to our Airbnb. My driver didn't speak any English, but Rachel was at the apartment to meet me and it was so great to watch her talk to the driver in Hungarian and pay him in Hungarian forint. The Airbnb we reserved (for about $100 per night, which felt very reasonable from my side, but was clearly a pretty high-end in Budapest) was really lovely. Rachel had suggested we stay in the Újlipótváros neighborhood (District 13), strategically located near the Danube across from Margaret Island. Rachel and headed out for a stroll and got me a month-long transit pass for free access to all public transportation -- which is quite responsible. We hopped on the 4/6 for one stop to the middle of the bridge to get the breathtaking view of Parliament, which was particularly so in the strangely eerie, foggy night. 

We walked back to the Airbnb and when to Babka for dinner, though we already had reservations there for later in the week.  We split a shakshuka which was quite delicious!

Rachel had school on Monday and also a concert she had to attend Monday night, so I had a day largely to myself (and a lot of work to get done). I went for a walk on a lovely walk on Margaret Island and then figured out how to take the H5 out toward Rachel's school.

Water Tower on Margaret Island

She met me at a stop halfway there for lunch. We ended up at the Zoo Cafe (which we didn’t realize but there were some good clues: we sat by the aquarium, a dog settled down by our table, and there was an iguana across the room). When Rachel headed back to school, I took advantage of the free wifi at the cafe to get some work done and then made my way back to the Airbnb to work some more. I went back out to the 4/6 to meet Rachel and travel with her to the part of town where her concert was to get a quick bite at Pizzica. I worked the rest of the evening until Rachel came home.

Tuesday was a rainy day, and Rachel's classes didn't start until later in the day. We both had work to do so she took me to this really cute bookstore cafe she had discovered.

We stopped at Aran Bakery first to get lunch treats and I ordered a hot apple drink that was delicious. I commuted with Rachel out to AIT to get a sense of what that was like. It is quite far to do every day but the public transportation is so good you never have to wait for more than a couple of minutes for the next train. Her friend Tiffany was on the same train and when we got to AIT, I met Jenny and Catey too. My neck was a little sore from all the travel I'd been doing so I took advantage of my alone time to get a Thai massage at a place right next to our apartment and worked while waiting for Rachel and friends to be done with school.

I took Rachel and her roommates (Jenny, Catey, and Fatima + Tiffany who is an honorary roommate who lives alone nearby) out for a nice dinner at a restaurant directly across from their apartment but that they'd never been to. It was super fun!

We got back to the apartment in time for Julia's arrival late that night.

Day 5: Together Again (Wednesday, November 16)

Jim was scheduled to arrive around noon but as is his way with international travel these days, his first flight was delayed and he needed to be rerouted. Julia was working all week, so she and I started off (after getting out of bed late) on a nice walk/run on Margaret Island. We looked for a good place to work and ultimately ended up at a little French cafe directly across from our apartment for hours and then more in our apartment once Rachel got back from school.

We had dinner reservations for 8:00 back at Babka and Jim made it to the apartment just in time! Our waiter at Babka remembered us from our first night and it was great to be able to order more from the menu to try and share. The rice pudding dessert was especially tasty and fun with all the toppings!

Rachel's expression is realizing that Jim has an iPhone finally!

Day 6: Work/Dinner Party Day (Thursday, November 17)

We wanted to take a bunch of Rachel's friends to dinner while in Budapest, but we decided that it would be easier and nicer to have them over for a home-cooked meal. I finally got up early (getting tired of the sleeping-in way of life) and accompanied Rachel back to her apt to pick up a few things I thought I would need to cook in the apartment and got to see the bakery she loves (Vaj, pronounced "voy") right across the street from her apartment. There is no shortage of pastries in Budapest!

We were cutting time close for Rachel to make it to school on time given the long commute, so Rachel picked up one of the ShareNow cars that are all over Budapest — you can pick them up anywhere and drop them off anywhere -- so convenient! The only catch is that you need an international driver's license to use the app, so Rachel was our only driver. She dropped me at the house and drove to school, making it in time for her 9 am class.

Jim, Julia, and I headed out to find a place to work for the day — Julia is officially working this week, and Jim and I always have stuff to do. We went to the cafe highly recommended by Juliana’s friend Maya first but it only gave out Wi-Fi passes for an hour, so after that we headed back to the bookstore cafe Rachel and I had gone to earlier in the week. As we had before, we first stopped at Aran for more bread and sandwiches to bring with us and enjoy our hot apple drinks. We also picked up a delicious loaf of bread for our dinner that night.

On the way back to the apartment, Jim and I stopped to do grocery shopping for our big dinner (Julia still had work to do). I had seen big eggplants in the market so I thought it would be easiest to make a big tray of eggplant parmensan. Surprisingly, we were able to find all the ingredients we needed, though identifying them took time. Jim walked around with his google translate photo app making sure we found the right spices. One of the things Rachel has had trouble finding in Budapest are fresh greens (other than cabbage). She has been craving them, but I guess she hadn't really checked my upscale neighborhood. I found a little store that had some beautiful kale tucked in the back and bought it all. We paid a premium (probably $15 dollars for the bunch), but it was well worth it. The three of us cooked together: Jim in charge of vegetables, Juila the salad, and me the main dish.

In true Rachel style, the guest list kept creeping up during the day but we ended up with a nice number of 10 that we squeezed around our table for 6. We loved spending time with Rachel’s delightful friends, and I think they really enjoyed a family meal served at home.

Day 7: Goulash and Fried Cheese (Friday, November 18)

Rachel got up early to finish homework and headed to school on her bike (not a great idea given the rain). Rachel's wonderful Hungarian teacher Marti invited us to join the class for a traditional lunch of goulash cooked by the students (but mostly by the teachers). She even made Rachel her own vegetarian mushroom soup (though Rachel likes mushrooms only slightly more than meat). Julia and I headed to campus early so Julia could log in to work; Jim slept in and met us there. It was so fun to meet all the students from many different colleges (Carleton, Swarthmore, Pomona, the Naval Academy, Wesleyan, ... I was in heaven). We played a fun round of Code Names (though we weren't really in sync with Jenny's clue-giving) and talked to Marti over lunch.

Rachel had more classes so Julia, Jim, and I went to work in the Planteen cafe on the campus where Rachel met us for more work. 

Given the rain and the late hour, we decided to grab a ShareNow car to get back to town, stopping first at the huge grocery store right next to AIT.  It was there that I got the idea of leaving Rachel with a tray of Stacked Enchiladas when we left town so she'd have some mama cooking when we were gone. But, that required several things -- we bought a cheap 9x13 pan and some tortillas, which I thought would be the hardest ingredients to get. 

We drove close to Rachel's apartment and decided to try one of the other restaurants on the square. She'd been to two but never tried the Hungarian one. We got a table and ordered two platters -- one vegetarian and one meat. A while later they came out to tell us they were out of some parts of the vegetarian platter and would be giving us extra fried cheese.  When we got it, it was just huge chunks of cheese deep-fried with a few potato rings, also deep fried. The meat one was chunks of meat and even chunks of fat, served separately. It was not a great meal.

We walked from there to the “community center” bar and had sodas while we played five hands of Rummy. As the girls claimed to be relearning the rules, we didn’t count the first hand where Jim killed it, and his game went downhill from there. Somehow he ended up with 5 points total.

We got back in a car and headed out for a Hungarian specialty that Rachel knew would be good: Longas — fried dough with sour cream and cheese. We threw in an order of doughnuts and jam to round out a night of terrible eating (but at least this part was yummy). It was a late night for us (out past midnight!), but super fun!

Day 8: First Day as Tourists (Saturday, November 19)

Today was our first real day to be tourists in Budapest and we needed to make a plan! I had called a family meeting for 9 am but pushed it to 10 when I finally fell asleep at 1:30 am. We woke to blue skies and had a breakfast of yogurt and blueberries (the buckets of blueberries have been so phenomenal!), but didn’t leave the house until noon.

We walked to the 2M and took the tram around the outside of the Parliament building to see the statue of Gyula Andrassy and the memorial Shoes on the Danube Bank which remembers an incident where Jews had been walked to the edge of the river and shot during WWII. We were last in Budapest six years ago and a lot has changed politically in the country; evidence of that is that a statue of Imre Nagy, a pro-reform communist, that had been overlooking Parliament (keeping his eye on it) had been relocated to another area of town, close to where we had caught the tram.

We kept walking down the river to where the Chain Bridge is, but it is closed for construction. We had been told by several people that the Four Seasons was not to be missed so we walked inside the retro art deco building to see if we could get a reservation for tea later that day (we couldn't). We used their beautiful bathroom and while it had occurred to me that we were out of toilet paper in our apartment and I could take some from their well-stocked supplies, it hadn't occurred to me to actually do it. So, I was a little surprised when Rachel exited the bathroom with an extra roll in hand. We did need it though, so I didn't make her put it back.

We were so lucky the Christmas markets opened this weekend while we were in town! One stretched from right outside the Four Seasons up to the Basilica. We started off strong at the first stall with mulled wine and kept going with our first (but not our last) chimney cake, hot apple cider (the perfect drink for the day), hot chocolate (another perfect drink for the day!), a cabbage and a cherry strudel (Jim was a little skeptical about the cabbage but he and Rachel liked it), roasted chestnuts, and lángos but with potato latkes, not just dough this time.

From there we took Rick Steve's walk up Andrássy Ut (stopping at the Opera House and a cool bookstore) and walked past the Academy of Music that Rachel wanted to see and a statue of Franz Litz playing the piano wildly.

We ended our walk with high tea at the other must-visit tea place in town: the New York Cafe. It is dubbed the fanciest cafe in the world, and it was pretty fancy. There was also a half-hour wait outside in the cold, but we decided it might be worth it. I'd say it was. It didn't have total charm, and it is so touristy it felt a little like Disneyland, something manufactured.

From there, we all went to Rachel's apartment, so Jim and Julia could finally see it. And, then we hit a second Christmas Market for more hot apple cider -- it was cold walking around! We didn't buy much but we did find a beautiful scarf for Sarah and took a picture with the artist weaver himself (a little pompous, but talented).

I'd made dinner reservations at Bombay Budapest, and we had a lovely Indian dinner right near the Four Seasons which put us in striking distance of the first Christmas Market for yet another chimney cake and hot chocolate afterward. We took a taxi home, exhausted.