matt's thirtieth birthday weekend was fun! the best thing about it was it fell on a hungarian four day weekend. perfect! four days for family fun and matt celebration! the weather was pretty much perfect the whole weekend - high of 70 and 30% humidity. almost everything we did was outside. we started off the weekend with a trip to the dagály thermal bath. it was a little breezy, but perfect for a swim in the 85-90 degree water. i only stayed outside the water long enough to snap a couple of pics.
this particular bath is located on the pest side of budapest along the danube river. you can't see the river, but if you look closely through the trees in this pic you can see the buda hills.
a kids pool. reese loved playing in the water and really got into the kicking when i pulled her around. she did a great job of holding her breath and closing her eyes when her face went underwater.
matt loved the bath! he found a great spot for a water massage for his shoulders and back while reese and i played on the lounge chairs with bubbles coming up from the tiles. it is such a neat place! we'll definitely go back there especially when it warms up more.
that afternoon we went to a may day festival over at hősök tere (meaning Heroes' Square). we got there just in time to see the traditional dancing around the may trees and decorating them with colored paper with wishes written on them. i couldn't get close enough to get a picture of the dancers. they were all dressed up in traditional hungarian outfits.
it's amazing to us how many people we run into around town, mostly being matt's colleagues from work. this is norbi (short for norbert) who works on matt's floor. he grew up in a small town outside of budapest and was able to tell us lots about may day in hungary. it's a holiday that was officially celebrated under the communist regime, and remains a public holiday. norbi says he remembers his dad having to go march with his labor company on this day each year.
friday was more of a chill day. matt took reese to the park in the morning while i did some gardening (flowers in window boxes) and relaxing in a silent home. after nap time we shopped and walked some streets on the buda side just to explore. we finished up that day with dinner at arriba taqueria and gelato from europa cafe. yum!
saturday after our special waffle breakfast we explored a neat area of budapest called normafa. it's a beautiful wooded area with lots of hiking and biking trails and playgrounds sprinkled throughout for stops for the little ones. here we ran into another colleague of matt's and his family. (see what i mean!) it was so nice to feel like we were out of the city. one of the highlights was to ride on the children's railway. it's a steam engine that is run by children. you purchase your tickets from them, they take the ticket on the train, and children drive it too! it's pretty cool to ride in the open sided cars beneath the green trees on the side of a hill.
we topped it off with lunch outside at the normafa cafe & grill. it had an austin-ish feel to it. after all that we headed home and all took naps and ordered dinner in that night. :)
what a great weekend to celebrate my husband and father of my children!
1 comment:
are these the baths you are going to take me to? looks like you had the whole place to yourselves. the train run by the children is very interesting. i'm always amazed that you run into people you know; it's such a big city.
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