Day at the Beach

One of our most fun days occurred when we rented a car and drove from Thessaloniki down to the middle "finger" of the Halkidiki peninsula. Our hotel concierge gave us great recommendations about beaches to stop at along the way. We stopped at 3 different beaches, but our favorite and the majority of the day was spent at Armenistis. Unbelievably beautiful. 

The beach was made up of teeny tiny pebbles. Cade was in heaven with a bucket, a shovel, and never-ending rocks. 

Logan wasn't so sure about the water at first, but quickly decided he liked it. It was so refreshing and completely clear. 

We made our way around the entire peninsula before grabbing a gyro and heading back to the hotel. Super fun day!

Bratislava

We hit the road this weekend for a quick 2 hour drive to Bratislava, Slovakia.  Why Bratislava? It is close and we hadn't yet been there, so why not? We stayed at a nice, small hotel about a 5 minute walk from Old Town.  We were a little afraid when we drove into the "parking garage" and found 4 spaces. Hmm.

                                       
But, the hotel turned out to be lovely and modern and spacious...we had a huge room with a king size bed and a pull out couch, plus a sitting area. There were 3 TV's and a computer in the room.  I would recommend Danubia Gate for anyone travelling to Bratislava. It also had a small children's play area.
                                     
Our room wasn't quite ready when we arrived, so we bundled up and headed out in search of lunch. We saw the usual McD's and KFC, but were on the hunt for something a little more authentic. But, when we turned a corner and saw a sign for Sbarro, I couldn't resist. It was across from an ice rink and for a brief moment I felt like I was at the Houston Galleria.
                                       
After lunch, we strolled though Old Town. The Old Town was picturesque..and a bit deserted.
                               
The picture above is the "Main Square". On a Saturday. In the middle of the day. Where, oh where, are the people? It was strange. It was also great, because the kids could run freely up and down the streets.
                                        

They enjoyed pretending to shoot the cannon and posing with random statues. 

                                        

           

This is St Martin's Cathedral, where several Hungarian kings were crowned during the almost 1000 years that Bratislava was part of Hungary. On the top of the steeple is a replica of the Hungarian crown. 

Across from the church was a wonderful children's museum, Bibiana.  I would recommend it for anyone with small kids. They had many rooms with different projects or play things in each room. 

                                             

Fun baking room

Pretend snow

 Mister man likes to use "skissors"

Under the Sea

Painting glass tiles

                           After our time there, we stopped for some coffee and dessert to warm up.

Option 1

Option 2

We are not so mean as to eat dessert and only allow our kids to have fruit...instead, Cade refused to try the cake and begged for an orange that he saw on the counter. Alrighty, then. 

Next up - the Bratislava Zoo...it needs a post to itself!

Getting to Europe CHEAP

Every time we come home to visit, people tell us how much they really want to come visit Hungary, but they can't afford to make the trip.  We've helped a number of people get there, thanks to one of my favorite past times... letting credit card companies pay for the trip!

Here's the short version of this post...

1. Get some American Airlines credit cards that have large sign-up bonuses
2. Plan your trip between October 15 and March 15 (off-peak times)
3. Call American Airlines to book your trip using any of the One World Airlines (except perhaps British Airways).

By doing this, you can nearly travel for free.  So let me expand on each point.

1. Get some American Airlines credit cards that have large sign-up bonuses
1. Citibank regularly offers large sign-up bonuses on their credit cards.  For example, in the past 15 months or so, they offered a 75K mile sign-up bonus on credit cards after a certain amount of spend (e.g. spend 5 thousand dollars in 6 months or something similar).  
2. Citibank offers 2 different American Airlines personal cards (e.g. MasterCard and American Express).  You can apply and receive bonuses for both with a little bit of research.  Of course, you have to meet the minimum spend on both cards to get the bonus.
3. Citibank also offers a business card that most people can apply for and receive the bonus for.  I personally have never done this, but I know many that do.
2. Plan your trip between October 15 and March 15 (off-peak times)
1. American Airlines offers a 33% reduction in required miles to travel in coach between USA and Europe between October 15 and March 15.  Instead of the normal 60K miles that are required, it only takes 40K miles.
2. You can use any of the One World alliance airlines to get between the USA and Europe.  This includes American, British Airways (avoid them if you can as their taxes/fees are excessive compared to others), Finnair, Iberia, Malev, and S7 airlines.
3. Call American Airlines to book your trip using any of the One World Airlines (except perhaps British Airways).
1. Before you call, decide with everyone you might be travelling with when you want to travel, what the earliest/latest you can travel is, and any alternate cities you are willing to use.  The more flexible you are, the more likely they can find something.
2. Be prepared to be on the phone between 30 minutes and an hour.  Be patient and let the representative do their job
3. When the representative answers, tell them what you want to do, but that you have some flexibility.  I usually also tell them I am not interested in flying British Airways across the Atlantic due to their excessive fees/fuel surcharges.  This is good information because they regularly use British when booking these awards.  Avoiding them will save you between $200 and $400/ticket most likely.
4. The representative will likely try to get you from any gateway city (e.g. Dallas, Chicago, New York JFK, Miami are all common examples, but there may be some others) to another gateway city (e.g. London, Frankfurt, Madrid, Paris, etc.) first.  Once they have found that, they begin working on the domestic portions of your trip.
5. Believe it or not, sometimes the domestic portion is the harder to find availability on.  They do have the ability to request that award seats be opened up if they found the international portion, but not the domestic.  In my most recent booking, the seats were opened up.  I was surprised, but this may be reasonably common.
6. You may have to overnight somewhere.  For example, American flies direct from JFK to Budapest, but the flight time makes it hard to get there from Houston.  
7. You may have to change airports.  For example, most international flights leave from JFK, but a lot of domestic flights go to other New York-area airports.
8. You may have to fly out of a different airport than the city you live in.  For example, you can go Austin to JFK to Budapest all without overnighting somewhere.  That is much harder to do from Houston.
4. This seems like a lot of work, but let's assume you are a family of 4 -- you would need 160K miles to fly round-trip to Europe when booking through American Airlines.  If you applied for 2 personal cards with a 75K sign-up bonus, you could easily get 160K miles (2 cards * 75K bonus = 150K; to get the bonus, you might have to spend 5K USD on the card which also earns you points.  5K @ 2 cards = 10K miles.  150K bonus + 10K spend = 160K = enough miles for a family of 4 to travel to Europe during offpeak times).

Of course, there are other ways to make this happen, but this is one of the cheapest I have found.  Citibank regularly runs good sign-up bonuses.  American has the cheapest options to Europe.  If you absolutely have to use a different airline alliance, most of the principles above will apply also, but it will cost you more miles and it may be harder to earn those miles.

Questions? Leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer.

Jet Lag

From a few days ago.....

Thankfully, we are now on a normal schedule!

Texas Time!

We have had a busy week! We wrapped up our Hungary Christmas festivities last week with Chelsea's winter concert and class party. 

The next day, we flew to Texas. Well, that was the plan anyway. After arriving in Frankfurt, we learned the plane to TX had broken bathrooms and therefore the FAA limits the amount of people that it can carry. Never heard that one before!! So, we spent some extra hours in Frankfurt.

                                    This was supposed to happen on the plane, not in the airport.

There were some tears of frustration by me as we learned we would be going to Washington then TX. Chelsea then begin crying, "I don't want to go to Washington, I just want to go to America!" A geography lesson ensued. After a few hours, we got on the plane to Washington and then sat on the runway for over an hour.  The flight was fine, but we arrived in Washington late and missed our connection to Houston. By this point, it was midnight and we had been travelling for over 24 hours. We went to a hotel for 5 hours and then returned to the airport to finish our trip to Houston.

We are thankful to be in Texas and are hoping we never have a trip that long again!

Trip to the Dentist

And what a trip it was! Long story short - when Chelsea was 2, she fell and hurt her front tooth. It has been fine for 3 years, but started bothering her and then developed an abscess in September. Dental visits here were super cheap, but more painful and different from the US in treatment recommendation. So, we decided to go back to Houston over fall break to get her tooth taken care of. She was a trooper! She is quite proud of her lost tooth and loves telling everyone about it.

While we were in Houston, we all had our teeth cleaned. Following the cleaning, Larry's whole face swelled up horribly and it turns out he had a bad tooth infection. He ended up having a root canal right before we left to come back to Budapest. We were thankful it happened there and he was able to get it taken care of easily. We are now back home in Hungary and hopefully done with dentists for awhile!

Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

Fall means it is time for the annual pumpkin patch pictures. We heard about about a Pumpkin Festival in a the town of Zebegeny with a pumpkin patch, rides, and more! Fun!  

To get there, we took our first Hungarian train ride outside of Budapest.  Getting on the train was an experience in itself. We arrived at the station close to departure time. We felt like we were on the Amazing Race as we tried to find the ticket counter.  We found it, waited in line, and Larry used his Hungarian to get us a csaladi jegy, or family ticket. Strangely enough, if you get a family ticket, the kids are free and the adult tickets are discounted. How that works out, I'm not sure!  

From the ticket counter, we hurried to find the train with only a few minutes to spare. We arrived at the platform and began looking in the train cars for seats - every car was packed! I was shocked! At this point, we were running down the platform with both kids, trying to make our way to a car with some empty seats. We ended up at the end of the train, and we still didn't find 4 seats. Crazy! We sat, took a deep breath, and took a pleasant one hour journey to Zebegeny. There, the pumpkin hunt began.  

 We have been here a year. After last year's Halloween experience, we should know that festivals here are a little different than in the US. After fruitlessly hunting for the great fields of pumpkins that I had conjured up in my head, we decided the "patch" was a little row of pumpkins. Oh well.

The kids still posed with pumpkins, so mission was semi accomplished. 

 This was the best outfit...how awesome is her hat??

 The only ride we found was the great Hungarian swing. You put your kid in a basket and someone stands in the middle and turns a wheel to make it go. Quite fun!  It would never fly in the States, because some kid would stand up and fall out and sue someone.

 New experiences, new memories, something new to laugh about....all in all, a successful adventure.

First Timers!

Parliament

We have enjoyed having Larry's parents here for the last 2 weeks and showing them around our great city and beyond. It was their first trip overseas, and we were so proud of them for being brave enough to come and experience life here. They enjoyed it and it was fun listening to their observations about how different things are here! What, no ice? I don't think they are ready to trade in their American conveniences and move to Europe!

Visiting Szentendre

Picnic at AISB

While they were here, we hit most of the Budapest highlights. We also took a long weekend trip to Austria, making stops in Linz, Salzburg, and Vienna. It was our first time to Linz, and we enjoyed our time there. I thought it was a nice mix of the feel of Vienna and Salzburg. We stumbled upon this cute little parade....

After walking through the main street, we took a train up the mountain in Linz. At the top is a fun little place called the Grottenbahn. It was really cute and my kids loved it. It is a little fairy tale ride and fairy tale village, with scenes from all the well known fairy tales. We had a fun time there, and I would recommend it for anyone with small children.

From Linz, we made a quick trip to Salzburg. The flowers were beautiful, as always!  We enjoyed a leisurely morning in Old Town while Geney and Wilbron did the Sound of Music Tour. 

On the way home, we spent the night in Vienna. It was a bit cold and rainy, so we didn't spend much time there before heading back to Budapest.

We have been blessed to have several visitors since we moved here....it is always fun and we are thankful for everyone who makes the long trip to visit!

Got Milk?

Larry's parents are here visiting, so we took them on a road trip to Austria this weekend. Most people visiting Austria come home with souvenirs such as cuckoo clocks or Christmas ornaments or painted eggs or Sound of Music memorabilia. Me?  All I wanted was cereal. Austrian grocery stores carry lots of cereal that we can't find (or can't find cheaply) in Hungary. We stocked up and should be set for awhile!

Split, Croatia

Split, Croatia  - our last stop before returning to Venice.  

We decided to have a low key beach day and took a taxi to Bene beach.

 

 Beach = happy kids!

 Cracker break

Let's get back in!

The crystal clear water was cold, but bearable. We all swam with our flip flops on, as the beaches in Croatia are painfully rocky to bare feet.

The cruise was such a great time for our family. We all came back refreshed and ready to start the school year.  We can't wait to take another cruise!

Ephesus, Turkey

 We loved our day in Ephesus! Once again, we took a private tour for a fraction of the cost of the cruise ship excursion. We had a lovely Turkish guide and we enjoyed learning more about her culture and Muslim faith. In turn, we were able to share a bit about our faith. Upon entering the ruins of Ephesus, one of the first stops was this inscription.
                                    
Our guide explained that the wheel shape was actually an early Christian secret symbol composed of Greek letters. In Greek, it says, "Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior. "  The symbol is found throughout the ruins in Ephesus.  All day long, Muslim guides proclaim the essence of our faith to tourists, yet do not choose to believe it for themselves.

Our tour was very thorough, and our kids were very hot and tired of history....so we asked for the short version. We still learned a lot and saw everything we wanted to see.

The Great Theater was amazing. It is where Paul once preached, and it seats 25,000 people.  The acoustics are such that no microphone is needed. Simply amazing.

Upon leaving Ephesus, we had a yummy Turkish lunch and visited a rug factory.  It was so interesting to see how the silk is spun and the tedious labor that goes into making rugs.  The owner was so nice to the kids and let them run wild over the rugs. Great fun!

They also made rug angels...that may have been a first for the rug store!

After declining a rug purchase, we headed back to the ship. We got on board and realized we didn't have enough diapers to make it to the next port, and ship store did not sell diapers. We had seen a little store right outside the port. We had about 2 hours until the ship was going to leave, so Larry and Chelsea headed off the boat and to the store. It was about a 15 minute walk to get there, so in my head I created a timetable of when they should be back and what I would do if they didn't return by the time the boat left. Would Cade and I get off? Who would I plead with to stop the boat? Thankfully, they came back well before my made up deadline. I decided we would not separate like that again!