Budapest

Budapest.
Again.
Oh yes.

I feel no shame, no matter what you might say (I hear the collective groan: this is the 8th time we've have to read about Budapest!) because it's been 4 years since the last post about this city and this time the circumstances are different in that we've never stayed on the Buda side, and we never stayed in this swanky apartment before.

Let's face it, I'll use any excuse to talk about this place.

Since our beloved but dumpy Casa Sol on the Pest side is no more, we've hopped to the other side of the river and upgraded (the toilet seats don't spontaneously collapse on us here Linda) and now we're a 5-10 minute walk to the market, Gellert baths and the alley with the gelato stand. (The alley has an official name but we are so food-oriented that we don't care.)

Other than the different accommodations, everything else followed our typical visit to Budapest: walking, food, gelato, baths, some touring, and repeat.

As of this writing not one of my friends has been to visit Budapest in spite of my passionate recommendations. It's still incredibly affordable, the food is wonderful, the people are friendly and English is as readily spoken here as any Italian city I've ever been to.

So check it out and book a ticket as fast as you can.

Off the balcony of our swanky apartment at dawn and dusk and while sipping coffee watching it rain. And by the way, this place is $130 a night. For a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath apartment with washer and dryer . Try finding even a smoke-saturated, carpet-stained, polyester-coverlet decorated circa 1980 hotel room in San Francisco for that price.

Some scenes from our marathon walks: to the Castle District, to the market (once again there's an official name but we just call it the market so we don't look so ridiculous trying to pronounce the Hungarian names), and a couple of parks and restaurants.

I include this one because I realized this is exactly, right down to the shoes, the same outfit I am wearing in nearly every other Budapest post from 4 years ago. Hey, I find something comfortable and I stick with it obviously. (Do not let my lack of fashion sense make you doubt my taste in good cities).

I got a chance to spontaneously bust out my Romanian and didn't do too badly on the fly. Or else they were just too kind to admit they couldn't understand a word I was saying.

A word to the wise: we saw more tour groups, and tourists in general, this time around than ever before so get on it and book your flights while it's still cheap and relatively uncrowded. Apparently my recommendation has gotten around to the rest of the world.

We are still tired.

Hello and Good-bye

It takes about 27 hours of traveling to get from our house in Santa Cruz to our house in Obedin. Car, plane, plane, car, train and car, these modes of transportation are needed, in that order. Now you know.

In case anyone needs the obvious to be expounded upon, it's an exhausting journey with little to no sleep under the best conditions. This time around was free of delays and lost luggage but it felt exceedingly tiresome. Maybe I've just done it too many times and the thrill is really gone. Could it be that I'm getting older and just don't bounce back like I used to? Say it ain't so.
In any case, we arrived somewhere near midnight local time, the weather was balmy and the house cool and maybe I was numb from exhaustion but we paid no heed to our surroundings, we simply staggered in, dropped our suitcases and crawled into bed. I was vaguely though pleasantly aware of how clean everything seemed but at midnight the state of the house was utterly irrelevant, I could think of nothing but sleep.

Then it was morning. Once I was coherent and caffeinated I began to notice how mercifully, miraculously and meticulously clean and organized everything was. Fresh sheets on the beds, bathrooms that sparkled and soap in the soap dispensers. No cat hair, no dust, no piles of furniture to maneuver around, bare surfaces on which we could place our things.  I wondered if, in our exhausted stupor, we had stumbled into the wrong house last night. Then it hit me: this is what it's like when someone is trying to impress you.

As many of you long-time faithful readers know, Pia passed away over 2 years ago. And now Silviu has a lady friend. Oh yes.

Her name is Silvia. No, that's not a type-o, it's Silviu and Silvia. Although for a 24 hour period it seemed like it was only going to be Silviu and his cats. It seems Silvia was caught up in a combo of nerves and fatigue over all of the preparations for our arrival and a lover's spat occurred a few hours before we arrived. I don't judge. There was clearly a lot of work that went into getting things ready for our arrival. A lot. I probably would have snapped too. (Who's kidding who, I totally would have snapped, we all know it). So as of the moment of this writing, we have yet to meet Silvia which is why there will be no photos of her in this post. I am sorry, I can think of several people (Lisa, Linda and Jenese) who will be cross with me but since the reconciliation has occurred, it's fairly safe to say that she will be showing up in a future post. So stay tuned.

So what will be in this post? Not much. Did I fail to mention that we're tired? It's difficult to take meaningful photos or write meaningful text when you're this knackered. (Some may point out that I never write meaningful text but I'll pretend I didn't notice). We did manage to make to trips into the city for things like toothpaste, the meeting, the boys' ID cards but that's only because we absolutely had to. Only because we're leaving tomorrow. Oh yes. The luggage tags are still on our suitcases, the smell of airplane still on our clothes, we've not yet unpacked and yet we're taking off.
Budapest here we come.

In the meantime I leave you with some photos of a Craiova which we almost did not recognize. A Craiova in which we only saw 1 stray dog. One. A Craiova with clean(ish) streets, with crosswalks and people using them. A Craiova, in short, in which it was pleasant to walk around for a few hours. At least I hope it really was that nice. Maybe it was all an exhaustion-induced hallucination. Did I mention we are tired?

Just so that you don't think we're trying to pull a fast one on you and pretend we're in Romania when we're not, here are some sights that might be more familiar to you long-time readers.

And of course a few shots around the house and garden just to show you that although the inside is clean, the garden gives the evidence that Pia is gone. It's strange to see the pathways choked with weeds and a lack of flowers blooming in the late fall. The garden was where her heart was and it misses her. We all do.
(and yes that is me walking around at 2 in the afternoon in my nightgown. Keeping it real as ever)

Did I mention we are tired?

On Packing for Europe. Again.

This is false.

There are, in fact, few things less conducive to happiness than packing for an extended trip. I have recurrent fantasies about casually throwing a few items into a petit carry-on an hour or two before leaving for the airport, strolling through the terminal pulling along only this one little piece of luggage which happens to contain nothing more unusual than some clothing, reading material and noise canceling headphones.

I fantasize about this the way other people fantasize about winning the lottery, their dream wedding, the invention of a motorized Lay-Z-Boy.

The reality this time is nothing on the scale of what it was when we moved for a year. On the Overwhelming Packing Experiences Scale, this time around falls somewhere between the I've-curled-into-a-weeping-ball-of-despair and I-am-actually-willing-to-live-naked-in-the-chicken-coop-for-the-rest-of-my-life-rather-than-do-this of days past. But it's no where near the single, lightweight carry-on of my fantasy.

This time we're maxing out our luggage allotment although I don't really know why that should be. We left so many things in the house in Romania for. the. exact. purpose of being able to travel light when we returned. And, unlike 20 or even 10 years ago, we can get everything once we arrive that we might have forgotten to bring. They have decent laundry soap and shampoo, real toilet paper and dental floss. All of it attainable at the nearest Kaufland or Billa.

I think we fill our suitcases with Costco-sized containers of multivitamins and ibuprofen out of habit. Admittedly filling a suitcase with blocks of Philadelphia cream cheese is an odd habit to get into and one you'd think would be easy to break but apparently no.

Then again, we leave in a matter of hours and, for all of my talk about traveling light, I am not yet packed. Mihai, with his tubs of Co-Enzyme Q10 and 5 pound bags of pistachios, has been done for days. So maybe I've got it all wrong, maybe the trick to being happy as you pack for a vacation far away, is to fill your suitcases with the most random items you can think of and sit back with the knowledge that, no matter what you might encounter at your destination, you are pretty much guaranteed to be prepared for it. 50 people with a headache? Check. Someone feel like making cheesecake for a crowd?  Got that covered. A dog with a flea infestation? Not to worry, the Ionescu's and their baggage have arrived.

If that's the secret then I'm going about this all wrong. Instead of spending all day barking at the boys to photocopy the relevant pages out of their textbooks, I should just let them haul around the whole tome and contentedly play video games for the rest of the day. Rather than agonizing over making judicious selections from my wardrobe ("can this pair of shoes really be worn with six different outfits?"), perhaps the solution is to just open up drawers and dump the contents into the maw of my suitcase until the zipper strains when I try to close it. Then maybe I'd resemble the smiling cartoon character in the image.

If that's the case then I must close this for now. Target is open and I believe there are lawn ornaments, paint rollers and maybe a case of Juice Boxes to purchase.

Happiness, here I come.


PS. We're doing the blog again because we can't seem to simply travel and take photos and leave it at that.
PPS No I never fixed the glitch with the comments. Oops. Sorry Karen C and all the others who complained.

In Memory...

Ana Caliope Ionescu

November 14, 1943 - July 8, 2013

Telling you all about the death of Mihai's mom, Pia, seems a sad way to begin this blog again. She had battled with cancer for more than 18 years. Although her last hours were unfortunately very uncomfortable for her physically, in the days immediately preceding her death she was feeling well enough that she and Silviu had taken the train to Bucharest and visited with friends there. In her usual style, once she returned back home she spent the day talking about what to do in her garden and was formulating plans to plant more raspberry bushes and try and make the climb up to the top of the hill to see the bee hives.
She died in the home she loved so well, with Silviu by her side.