Last night I checked out of Ilonka's and in to a hotel. I am determined to enjoy each and every last minute of my vacation. I wouldn't trade the trip to Austria, nor the time I stayed in Esztergom or Sarborgard, but I still feel there's more I can get out of this trip. I had a great nights sleep last night on a more comfortable bed with no snoring restless grampa around. That combined with nice hot showers where I don't feel rushed, and I feel great. The cough still comes and goes but otherwise I'm 100%.

After we got back from Austria we spent another 2 days in Esztergom. The first night we went out for dinner with the Balogh's and a friend of the family. It was a cute little theme restaurant in Visegrad, about a 15-20 minute drive from Esztergom.

The food was great and since I sat next to Kris I had someone to talk to. I also had an nice glass of red wine that went perfectly with the meal.

The next day we went out to Jansci's pincer (wine cellar). It's in a cute area sort of like mini vineyards. People have a small house with a cellar and some farm land around it. Some of the houses were pretty elaborate and were more like weekend homes while others were more functional and used only for making wine or palinka (pronounced pall-ink-ah) which is a fruit brandy. Potent stuff, I imagine it's what paint thinner would taste like if it had a slight fruit aftertaste.

Jansci doesn't bother with the growing part, he prefers to buy the fruit from other people and then make the liquor.

The next morning Jansci rented us a car to use for the duration of our stay and loaned us one of their GPS units. We then headed back to Budapest. Unfortunately, the GPS unit spoke in Hungarian and grampa was getting confused by its directions. Since I couldn't understand a word it said I couldn't help him with it, so I turned it off, switched on my wifi, and used Google navigation on my phone. We got back to the apartment in about an hour and a half and were able to park behind Ilonka's apartment for a small daily fee.

In case some of you haven't noticed some of the pictures of have a magnifying glass in the lower right hand corner. Images with this can be clicked on to see a larger version. I started this about 3 posts in I think. I have the images in their original size (which are huge) if anyone wants copies for some reason.

Just let me know.

Naturally I have taken far more pictures than I post, and even after going through the, at current count 1216, images I still have about 250 that I think are worth seeing. Of course I still have this last week so that will only increase :)

From the Eagles nest we drove straight to Salzburg and in search of lunch. Unfortunately since we stopped at the Eagles nest we didn't have much time to spend in Salzburg. So our time was limited to lunch and a little shopping. It is a nice city and appears to have much to see, I wouldn't mind going back sometime.

And that was pretty much it for Salzburg. We went back to the car and made the 8.5 hour drive back to Hungary and Esztergom. Again, I can't thank Kris enough for all the driving he did.

Well I got sick. Monday night I felt a sore throat coming on, got little to no sleep because breathing was uncomfortable and my grandfather makes way too much noise. Woke up Tuesday feeling terrible.  We were supposed to do the "Ilonka whirlwind visitation tour" where we drive the 1.5 hours to Sarborgard (my grandfathers home town), see 5 different families (all who want to stuff you silly), hit the cemetery where their parents and her husband are buried, then drive back to Budapest before it gets dark.

I was so not up for that. I told them to go without me and just let me sleep the day away. I figured it would be easier with an empty apartment. Ilonka was not going to have it; as if I can't take care of myself. So she called everyone up and cancelled, telling them I wasn't feeling well. It sort of made me feel like an ass, but what could I do? I slept the day away and that night decided to stay in a hotel 3 minutes away on foot, so I could get a good nights rest without my grandfather. Otherwise, I was not going to get any better.

Apparently this was an issue with Ilonka. He got all of it though since I don't understand a word of what she says. I appreciate everything she does for us, but I need to take care of myself so I can enjoy my vacation. I don't regret the decision one bit. Besides, she's prone to over reacting.

So, where was I? Right, Hallstatt.

After the salt mines we got back in the car and drove a short distance to a sleepy little town called Gosau. It's a beautiful place nestled in a valley between the mountains. We stayed at a hotel called Chalet Edelweiss, in a nice little 2 bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor with a great view.

 The next morning we drove towards Salzburg making a stop to see the Eagles Nest in Berchtesgaden which sits on the Germany/Austria border. Hitler's home which was also located here was bombed after the war and all traces were removed. However, the Eagles Nest was spared and allowed to be preserved as a historical site. Today a restaurant operates in it's place and tours are allowed. Originally the place was a gift to Hitler for his 50th birthday, paid for by increased taxes to the German/Austrian populace who didn't even know of it's existence until after the war. It was built in less than 2 years at the highest point of the summit, used as a tea room and conference center to entertain visiting dignitaries.

Due to the altitude it is often covered in clouds and only has occasional moments when the views clear up. I took as many pictures as I could in those brief moments of clarity.

The place is an interesting bit of history and the views are great when the clouds clear for a bit. The road up is steep but the buses and their drivers are excellent. It was super cold up top and poor Kris was wearing shorts, but he toughed it out and survived. We caught our scheduled bus back to the lot and resumed the journey to Salzburg.

So I'm back in Budapest. After an adventurous week through Austria and some of the far west sights of Hungary, we prepare for the next phase of our visit. Uncle Janci rented us a car for the next 2 weeks and we plan to make full use of it. That is if my grandfathers driving doesn't kill us. We drove back to Budapest from Esztergom this morning and I have to say it was a little scary. My grandfather is a little out of practice with a stick shift; sadly I think it still may be safer than me driving since I last drove a stick about 8 years ago... when a friend was teaching me.  Never again since. SO I guess my life is in his hands.

It was nice knowing almost all of you.

But I get ahead of my self. We last left off in Vienna. That night we drove back to the hotel in Fertő and stayed the night.

The next morning we packed up and headed in the direction of Salzburg, allll the way on the other side of Austria.

Did I mention how awesome Kris was to drive the whole time? No? Well he was. And I'm not just saying that because he knows this page exists. Really.

It's a beautiful drive through the mountains.

Along the way we stopped in a little town called Hallstatt, home to one of Austria's 3 salt mines that have been mined since the prehistoric era. It's a cute little town.

Whew. That was longer than I expected. I actually have quite a few more pictures but I thought these summed it up best. It was actually really interesting and a lot of fun.

I was hoping to get more caught up but I need to head back to Ilonka's. I'm supposed to be back by 8pm since they have no way to get a hold of me, and I know she'll start freaking out if I'm not back on time. I may be able to get another post in tonight. That is if my grandfather doesn't insist on checking his 3 spam traps he calls email accounts.

Oh and your Hungarian vocabulary word for the day: hideg (pronounced he-day-g). It means cold. I think by my last count my grandfather has said this word about 43 times since I've gotten here, and that's just in Magyar (Hungarian). Never mind the many times he's said it in English as well.

Tuesday we left our stuff at the hotel and drove to Vienna. When you enter the city it looks a lot like Budapest but a little more modernized in the outer districts. In order to avoid the exorbitant parking costs in the city center (also known as the Zentrum), we found parking in a public structure on the outskirts and opted for public transport. After tracking down a day pass for the city's public transportation (buses, street cars, and metro; all of which were cleaner than the ones in Budapest) at a tobacco shop, we hopped a bus to the metro station (ironically it was called Philadelphia Bridge). After a quick metro transfer from the U6 to the U4 we got off at Karlsplatz and walked to Schönbrunn Palace, the 1400 room imperial residence of Emperor Franz Joseph.

Unfortunately no picture taking is allowed inside so you only get a couple exterior shots.

Grampa took one look at the place and decided he wouldn't make it. So he and Kris kicked back at the palace cafe near the front gate. Gabby and I continued on and took the tour. Since we had them waiting for us we didn't get to see the gardens or the terrace, both which I briefly saw through the windows and were beautiful. Maybe some other day...

From the palace we headed out in search of food and the Hofburg Palace. We ended up little outdoor cafe/bar and after a quick look at the menu I ordered a rissoto and everyone else ordered hamburgers. I was the only person satisfied with his meal, there was some strange spice in the burgers that made them taste funny. Kris has been through Austria on the way to Germany before, he said even the food at McDonald's tastes funny. He ordered a chicken sandwich once and it had a sauce that looked like ketchup, but wasn't. Folks, don't order burgers in Austria, it's not safe.

Now, I should mention at this point that the moment we hit Austria, I somehow became the defacto speaker and navigator (for everything off the highway, the GPS took care of all highway navigation). It seems that while I can't speak Hungarian or German, I seem to be the best equipped to communicate with people in broken English. I don't know if it has something to do with a decade of tech support experience in Hawaii and having to figure out what customers problems are through context. That and my travel companions can't seem to find their way out of a paper bag, make 2 left turns and they have no idea which way we came from. Actually, Kris seemed to be relatively on top of it but was letting me handle things; I think he was getting a kick out of it. To make matters worse, my grandfather questioned EVERY SINGLE directional choice I made even when I explained the logic of it to him. Very frustrating.

After I puzzled out some directions from our waiter we headed off on public transport again to the Hofburg palace. This place is huge and contains about 17 different museums. There was no way we would be able to get through everything so we decided we would go and check out the arms and armor museum. And just our luck, it was under renovation.

We didn't feel like searching for another exhibit so we strolled across the street took a couple more pictures and made our way back to the car.

Getting back to the car was an adventure. I knew where we had to get to and I'm fairly good with maps and metro/bus/cable car route diagrams so I was able to plot out a decent course. Unfortunately, since I don't speak German I had no way to know the announcement over the radio on our metro line was saying that the was no service between several of the stations on our route. I had to figure this to when we were 4 stops away and suddenly started going backwards. After a quick look at the route map I was able to reset our course but we had to take a longer route. By the time we got back to the garage my brain was fried.

When we had entered the parking structure I took the parking ticket from Kris so he would have both hand free to drive (the car is standard), and I stuck it in my back pocket. When we got back to the garage I pulled out what I thought was the parking ticket and handed it to Kris so he could use the parking machine to pay. For some reason the machine wouldn't read the ticket, and the message in German on the screen was no help in telling us what was up. We figured maybe the parking was free and would try to get out. Kris drove up to the gate and I walked up to the machine and inserted the ticket, no go. Kris backed out and parked on the side while Gabby and I went back to the parking machine. I pressed the service button and got an operator who passed me to a supervisor that spoke English. The supervisor asked us to try another machine, looking around I didn't see another machine; we ended up having to go the the next floor down. This one also didn't want to read the ticket, luckily before I could press the service button again a lady came out of the elevator. I stepped to the side so she could pay and she took the ticket from me and tried to help. This is when I realized something didn't look right. Apparently my San Fransisco Bart pass had fallen out of my wallet and was right next to the parking ticket...

Thankfully everyone thought this was hilarious once we realized what had happened. Of course, I was thoroughly embarrassed. That was 10 minutes of our lives we'll never have back.

So my mobile internet access has been restored! The dutch provider had an issue with some sort of EU data restriction that capped usage out at 23MB.  They thought they had bypassed this when setting up their systems but apparently it managed to rear it's ugly head anyway.  Now with that resolved I'm back up and limited only by battery power. That and when my grandfather doesn't take 3 hours to go through his stupid email.

I left off with day 1 in Budapest. To catch things up quickly day 2 was uneventful; other than a trip to Starbucks at the West End mall to use their wifi we didn't do much else. Grampa's legs were bothering him too much and he was getting winded just strolling about 50 feet. We tried to go out after lunch but ended up turning around before ever getting to the metro station.

Monday had me back at Starbucks in the morning while he stayed at the apartment with Ilonka. She wanted to bake something for us to take and he didn't want her to both bake and cook so he offered to do the cooking for the day. He later grumbled that he would have liked to get a message in. Around 4pm my cousins Vanda and Kris picked us up and drove us to their home in Esztergom (roughly an hour and half drive). We had dinner and spent the night there. The next morning we packed up and headed towards Austria. The travel party includes myself, Grampa, my Aunt Gabby, and my cousin Kristopher.

We drove towards Austria, assisted by a Hungarian speaking GPS, and stopped at the Esterhazy palace known for its contributions to the arts and music of its time.  This palace was home to many concerts, plays, and operas and was home to the famous Austrian composer Joseph Hayden. The palace is full of opulence, hand painted ceilings, and gilded walls. It was both beautiful and a little over the top; however, this is common for many structures of the time period.

From here we dropped our stuff off at the hotel. It was a cute little place, more of an apartment. There were 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen and a living room.

Our last adventure for the day was a quarry that supplied the stone for buildings in the local area (Sopron) and also as far as Vienna. This mine was worked by prisoners sentenced to hard labor and no machinery was used at the time. For the most part it's a giant hole in the ground with a big cave off to the side. But when you think about it, that hole was excavated by hand. Surprisingly, because of it's awesome acoustics the cave is used during the summer as a theater for plays, opera, and even concerts.

Since the weather had seemed to calm down while we ate we decided to risk some outdoor sight seeing.  Grampa told me that the bulk of the restoration work at St. Matthias church in the Castle District had completed. In 2007 when we visited the church it was surrounded by scaffolding while they were restoring the tiles on the roof.  That didn't make for good picture taking of the outside of the church. So we headed down to the nearest metro station to make our way under the Danube and into the older districts. While waiting for the metro Grampa made a new friend, of course.

Meet Julia. She's a Chinese national who has been living and working in Budapest for the last 4 years. Her grasp of Hungarian is far better than mine but still in progress; although it happens to be better than her english. Julia happened to be going up to the castle district as well so Grandpa asked if she would like to join us, of course. Julia has wasted no time while in Hungary.  She has a little map book with all the popular sights and things to do while in Budapest and this thing is well worn with notes and pen marks all over the place and has been going out every weekend and doing everything there is to do in the city.

After about 3 hours we parted ways with Julia and headed back to Ilonka's for dinner. Grampa wanted to stay out a bit longer and do some more, but his knees had a different idea.  The cold weather and increased activity were not doing him any favors and I could tell he was in pain so I insisted we head home 'cause I was tired and hungry. After nice dinner of töltött paprika (paprika peppers stuffed with a pork/beef filling and a tomato sauce) I zonked out for the evening.

After a long sleep I was up bright and early and ready to head out. Grampa threw together a quick breakfast of tojas with paprika and szalonna (eggs scrambled with paprika pepper (not the spice but the actual pepper) and bacon. Once fed we got ready and headed out.

Grampa has been here since Monday night and has been out and about every day. He found a large mall called Mammut (Mammoth) that's comprised of 2 buildings about 5 or six stories each. From the outside it doesn't look that big but 2 of the levels are underground. We walked around for a bit with no real purpose and took in what constitutes as the retail world here in Hungary. In the 4 years since I've been here commercialism has only strengthened with more advertising and mainstream trends. I was surprised to find a KFC and TGIFridays in the mall. I was already accustomed to the Burger Kings and McDonald's. but Fridays threw me off. I also don't remember seeing any Starbucks locations in 2007 but now they're pretty common (and a good thing too since I can count on them for free wifi while I get my internet issues worked out).

The weather was still ugly so I figured it best if we found something to do under cover.  In my reading I had come across many mentions of a top tier pastry shop called Gerbeaud.  It has a long history and many articles sited it as a one of the top 2 pastry shops in Europe (the other being in Austria). Grampa was game so I fired up Google Maps while I had a wifi connection, got directions, and we headed out. A metro and bus ride later and we were there. At this point I realized it was 1pm and we hadn't eaten since about 8am so we decided to have lunch first and dessert after. Gerbeaud has expanded over the years to include a restaurant and pub in addition to the pastry/coffee shop. We decided to sit on the terrace and order from the pub. 

Grampa ordered a nice dark beer and I had a lemonade.  The drinks were huge and Grampa didn't even finish his beer.  He did say it was good though. We looked over the menu, which thankfully had english descriptions (a fact my grandfather didn't notice and was amazed at how my grasp of Hungarian had improved, I let him in on the secret after a couple minutes).

I decided on the Bélszín steak tejszínes rakott burgonyával,
grillezett zöldségekkel (beef steak with layered creamy potatos and grilled vegetables). Grampa went with the Borjúpörkölt (a Pork stew with sour cabbage and potato served with sour cream). My meal was very tasty and I enjoyed it.  The steak was cooked just the way I like it, nice and tender, and the potatoes were soft and creamy. Grampa of course was disappointed with his meal. That's the problem with ordering a meal you can make yourself, if it's not made the way you make it, then it isn't good.  He complained there wasn't enough cabbage. Understand, this is my grandfather when it comes to Hungarian food; if it's not done his way then it isn't right. You should hear him and Ilonka when it comes to cooking, there's no doubt they're related.

After we finished or meal we headed into Gerbeaud and found a table by the window. This place is old, dating back to 1858 it still maintains the classic decor of it's time. The place has been renovated a couple times but they always stuck with a fashionable older style.

Offering a wide selection pastries, sandwiches, salads, and coffee, they are also known for their cookies to take away. I took a look in the display case and had a terrible time deciding on any one item. The logical thing would have been to just order one of everything I considered. Sadly, I did the sensible thing and we ordered from the menu instead.

 From here we here we had to decide what to do next. We knew we had to work off our indulgent meal before heading back.

I know I've gone this route once before, but 4 years is apparently enough time to forget how much it takes out of you. Sadly I was too pooped to take any pictures along the way through Amsterdam. It's a huge airport with a lot going on, I promise to get a couple shots on the way back through since I won't be coming off a 9 hour 45 minute flight.

On the bright side, it was only a 9 hour and 45 minute flight and not 12 hours.  We actually got in about 45 minutes early. Economy plus isn't much to talk about. The seat wasn't first class and I don't think it really is much different from Economy, except maybe an inch or 2 more for leg room. I was fortunate however that my seat was on the aisle and the 2 seats to my left were vacant. I was thrilled when we started to move and I realized I had all 3 to myself. That excitement was dampened once I found out the arm rests only go up to about 45 degrees, effective preventing you from utilizing all 3 seats. However, it was enough for me to turn sideways and stick one of my legs across and this made a huge difference for comfort.

I tried to sleep. I failed.

I landed in Amsterdam at about 8:50am local time and after a brief 55 minute layover, TSA and Customs check, hopped on the 1 hour 45 minute flight to Budapest.

After disembarking I made my way to baggage claim and while everyone gathered around the unmoving conveyor belt I made arrangements to get to Ilonka's place and back with the airport mini shuttle (4990 forint/$26.53) and changed out some of my cash for forint. By the time I had that all squared away my bag was moving down the belt and I was able to grab it and head out.

I got to Ilonka's around 1:30pm local time. Upstairs I said "hi" to my grandfather and aunt who started chittering away in Hungarian happily. She fed me a meal of csirka paprikas with gnoocdli (stewed chicken with creamy paprika sauce over little bits of gnocchi like pasta, I've linked to a recipe online that's close). Again, I apologize for a lack of pictures, but I was too tired.  After I ate I took a shower, confirmed my internet connection was working (allowing grampa to check his email and call my mother to let her know I was here) and knocked out for the night.

It's cold here right now. There's been a storm in the area for the week and it's brought the temperatures down to the 55-65 degree F range. For a guy born and raised in Hawaii, that's cold. Thankfully my jacket is more than equipped for the weather and it's actually kind of pleasant; when it isn't raining.