What a week! It started with a BIG change in plans and ended in Europe. Can't beat that.
The only thing on my agenda for Monday was a 2:00 zoom for 15 minutes with a vendor about a new service for the library (wearing my library board president hat). I had no sooner started the zoom when my phone started blowing up, Anne started messaging me and then doing a video call. I finished the zoom (it was totally lame with a slick salesman who couldn't answer any questions) and immediately called Anne back on Messenger and that lead to a 3 way call with the company doing our river cruise and then came the big news.
Due to drought, there was not enough water in the Danube so we couldn't do a cruise. They offered several options including doing the same tour but staying in hotels and taking a bus between cities. Since I was having my only bathroom gutted to the studs and redone, I had to be gone so we picked that option. Because we agreed to that, we'd be getting everything we paid back as a mix of cash back and future trip credit. All good but I'll admit to a bit of disappointment to not be cruising down the river but what can you do? We'd still have fun and going to Europe is always good.
The rest of the week went by in a blur with me checking things off my list. I replaced wheels on my luggage, shipped a box of yarn to Dottie, bought paint for the bathroom, got friends and neighbors set up to water plants and feed cats and finally packed. After doing the last few things on Friday morning, I soaked my head (the sweating!), got dressed and was ready when Lorri and her husband came to take me to the airport. I met Anne and we were off!
Our itinerary wasn't ideal. We were leaving from Lincoln, which is always nice, but were flying west to Denver then back over Nebraska to Munich. 10.5 hours just for that flight and then 45 minutes from Munich to Budapest. I barely slept on the long flight but sat next to a man on the flight to Budapest who gave me all kinds of tips on Budapest and told us a couple of must eat items. Cool. Not cool was finding out our luggage was still in Munich but we got a text telling us that just as we got to the baggage carousel. They'd deliver it later that day so not horrible.
After a quick bus ride, we checked into our hotel, dropped out luggage in our room and took a shuttle downtown. Despite being pretty tired, we walked around for a couple of hours, got a Starbuck's caffeine boost and took a shuttle back to the hotel for supper. We made it through the day on barely any sleep. Day 1 success!
After a nice hotel breakfast (great buffet), we had an orientation at 9:00 before heading back downtown for a walking tour. Since I knew nothing about Budapest, it was very interesting. Afterwards we had time on our own to explore and Anne and I immediately found a restaurant to get a langos, which was one of the recommendations from the man I sat next to on the flight. Delish! It was hard to explain but was a big deep fried dough dish with edges filled with Hungarian sour cream, which is different and delicious, bacon, onions and cheese. I'm sorry to say it was the best thing I ate on the whole trip. We shuttled back to the hotel and walked to a buffet nearby that night that was bedlam with zillions of people (beyond our 100+) and so loud that I couldn't wait to get out of there.
While it was clear that the food wouldn't be the star of the trip (we were supposed to be eating every meal on the boat), there were fun people and our tour manager was great. They split the 101 people in to 4 groups and each group had our own bus and manager so we weren't crammed in. I was looking forward to the rest of the trip. Stay tuned.
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