Budapest!

 

We just got back from our incredible first camily trip – to Budapest. It was so much fun, for us and for the kids. We did a bunch of attractions that were all home runs, had a lot of chilling time, and got closer as a family. It was so fun to watch the interactions between the kids, and especially the uniqueness of their personalities. And it felt like Shifra and I were seeing eye-to-eye on everything, which was really fun.

We have a Google Photos album, we are printing a digital one, and I am making a video. But sometimes the written word can add more to those memories than photos could. I am going to write down some things that stood out, mostly ones that aren’t in the pictures

Some highlights:

·       The taxi driver having the wrong address

·       The taxi driver not waking up on time to bring us back to the airport, and downloading Bolt quickly to get a ride so we didn’t miss our flight

·       The guy in Normafa who went on a long run, chugged a beer, and continued

·       The Assado and Goulash in the Jewish Quarter

·       Meeting REG in the Jewish Quarter

·       All the Hebrew we heard

·       The kids excitement to go on the Budapest Eye

·       Shabbat: Meital getting us in on the digital code the first time, getting us locked out the second time and saying “all done” until we got a Goy to come open for us (was fun trying to explain to her)

·       Managing with one toilet (we are NOT a one toilet family anymore)

·       Walking 75,000 steps in 4 days

·       Walking into a church accidentally and walking right out

·       Planning to go on a boat thanks to ChatGPT and then figuring out that that boat hasn’t existed for 4 years

·       Using chatgpt to take a picture of a statue and ask it to explain to a 5 year old what it means

·       Watching an army marching band at Hero Square

·       Climbing trees in Normafa and finding the giving tree

·       The specific shows at the zoo (feeding sharks – with the guy giving Eitan a high five, sea lions amazing show, elephant training show, penguin feeding). Being able to spend almost 7 hours at a zoo and still feel like we could have been there for longer

·       Circus – the dogs going down the slide and one not going down, only going down backwards – the Meital

·       The spaghetti the kids went on crazy about

·       All the different transportation we went on

·       First airplanes, first boat

·       Helping check in for El Al on the way out

·       The bike lock on the stroller issue in both airports (BG didn’t let me out of plane to find the key, Budapest didn’t let us through on airplane with it

·       Deleting Slack off my phone in BG Airport

·       The freaking cucumber

·       Lots of help the one time we took the underground M1 with the stairs

·       Shifra (and all of us) climbing up the magic rock mountain for no reason

·       Hadari (and all of them) in the petting zoo

·       Putting them on the plastic elephant and then catching them when it fell (it wasn’t nailed in apparently)

·       How much they (especially Meital) enjoyed putting feet in the fountain

·       The beauty and energy of walking through Budapest

·       Buying cold ice water in Mcdonalds in a day with a bunch of walking

·       Seeing the ghetto wall – which they will understand when they are older

·       Hanging up a Tal sticker

·       The views from Normafa

·       The taxi “booster seats” on way to airport

·       Meital figuring out how to unbuckle

·       Scaring the pants off Meital with the flusher

·       Middle of landing, taking off again due to wind

·       The kids being nervous to go on the zipline, Meital basically pushing them out of the way to get on.

·       Meital nodding when we said she needs to hang on with two hands the whole time, and then waving to Shiff when she passed her

·       Eitan being the best big brother ever, caring for his sisters every step of the way

·       Hadar being a big girl and great middle sister and an absolute princess

·       Eitan being asked to do things much older than him – like pulling two suitcases, watching Meital

·       Cherry coke for 4 shekel (but with almost no CO2 besides in the airport)

·       Daily Tesco berries

·       Terrific Lady Night

·       Running up to see Bubi in the airport

·       Sticker activities on both flights

·       How excited Hadar gets to tell a story

·       Their animal (especially sea lions) imitations.

·       Using google translate transcribe to get subtitles on trainings, and Google Lens to hover over signs

·       10 pieces of luggage as carry ons and backpacks instead of paying for a suitcase. And El Al giving us seats all next to each other for free which was perfect.

·       Watching their reactions on the flights – nervous for takeoff and then calm very quickly

·       Seeing the cockpits

·       Most of all, just to watch how much fun they were having non stop on this trip. Excited for the next one!