Our tour guide from yesterday gave us lots of good suggestions for things to see and do in Budapest, one of which was this indoor market.

There were lots of places to buy souvenirs as well as try out the Hungarian pastries.

After a super healthy (?) breakfast/lunch, we met Rachel and Wendy, who flew out to join us for the last two days.

Budapest is known for its natural hot springs and super old, super fancy mineral baths.  So, we went to this Turkish bath that has been around since the 1600's.

Yeah, it was cool.  We stayed and soaked until we were thoroughly raisiny.  Besides the baths, there were also some saunas where you could sit and sweat, then pour bucketfuls of cold water on yourself, but Susanne was the only one who liked that.  The rest of us preferred to sit in the warm water and watch the nearly naked people kiss.

Those baths really did their job relaxing us, because at dinner we all sat around the table like zombies.  But, after an hour or so of free refills (!), we jazzed up again.

Dreamy, dreamy Mozart.

Back at the hotel, we broke out the Bananagrams.  Delightful!

Our first full day in Budapest began with us spending the morning wandering around the city and doing a little shopping.

In the afternoon, we took a walking tour of Budapest and saw lots of cool things while freezing our hineys off.

After a yummy dinner at Hard Rock Cafe, where we partook most heartily of the free refills, we finished off the evening with games and much girl talk in the hotel.

Budapest, Baby!

Today, I flew to Budapest, Hungary with Susanne, Denise, and Shawna for a Girls' Weekend.

We started with a dinner cruise on the Danube. . .

. . .where we ate fu-fu food like this. . .

. . .and floated by views like this.

It was AWESOME!!

Tonight, I went to Pepper's seventh grade production of The Diary of Anne Frank.  I knew he was memorizing the lines for Miep Gies, the woman who helped the Frank family get supplies and food while they were in hiding, but I guess I never realized that he would be playing a WOMAN in the actual play.

It was all I could do not to burst out laughing when he took the stage in drag.  Then, I was horrified for him.  But, nobody snickered at all in the whole room.  I guess cross-dressing is no big deal to these seventh grade students and their parents.

Tonight, I hosted my book club.  We read Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler, and apparently I was the only one who liked it.

I thought the emotions were raw and the storytelling very clever.  The rest of my group thought it was depressing and long-winded, with unlikable characters.

So there you go.  Is that a recommendation, or what?

After partying all weekend, we finally wrapped up the birthday celebrations tonight on Adam's real birthday with a spaghetti dinner and cupcakes and ice cream.

Happy birthday, Bubba-La!  I can't believe you're 11!!  

 

 Adam got an iPod Touch for his birthday, and you can see he didn't even remove the ear buds to blow out his candles.  I have a feeling all future shots of Adam will include the ear buds.

Sorry to post a picture of food - again - on my blog.  I really am against people who post recipes with perfectly-lit photos of each step of the preparation, and a final, blurry-background-and-highlighted-finished-product photo of their culinary creation.

 Because to me, food is just one more chore. 

But, since I spent all day in bed feeling lousy and growling at everybody, these cupcakes are the only accomplishment worth noting:

Adam's birthday is tomorrow, so of course I had to make cupcakes for his class.  I tried to be fancy with the frosting, but I really just made a mess.  But any mess made with buttercream icing is still a win, in my opinion.