Budapest was splendid!! :o)

Sometimes I feel like I need to pull out the good ole thesaurus to look up other acronyms for the word "awesome" as I try and describe all these amazing places we are visiting!  I don't think splendid quite covers how much we enjoyed this lovely city, but you get the idea :o)

It was pretty much a whirlwind trip to Budapest. We hadn't planned to go there until Ryan Airlines offered us seats for 2.15 per person (that's right 2 euros and 15 cents!!!)...and we actually over paid as they went down to 1 euro the next week. So we agreed to their terrible timeframes (leaving at 6 PM Wednesday night and returning home at 6 AM Saturday morning) and hopped on our not so favorite airline once again.  We decided to splurge a little on this trip too and stayed at the Iberostar Grand Hotel and it was so worth it!  The location was great and the hotel was so nice!!

One thing I knew we wanted to do while there was visit one of their well known thermal baths.  So first thing Thursday morning we were off to go swimming.  We decided on the Szecheny baths as it's one of the biggest and most well known.

It was so much fun with the whirlpool in the middle and the heated water.  It was a grey morning, but the temperature was just right to enjoy the warm waters. After swimming we headed back to the hotel to refresh and nap before heading out for dinner.  For dinner we found a real treat...filet mignon!  It was delicious...much better than most of the steaks you find in Europe. It was definitely a fun filled first day in this splendid city :o)

The next morning after some pastries...we were headed out on our own walking tour to see the sites :o)

 I loved the beautifully colorful tile roofs!

  We saw three brides on our trip...so of course I just had to steal some shots...

 The Parliament building was quite stunning...especially from across the river!

Another beautiful bride...about to go in to her wedding at the St. Stephen's Basilica. We didn't get any good shots inside the church because as you can see, more important things were happening there. 

So our funny story from the trip...there were these fountains outside our hotel....it was a rectangle of fountains and we learned when we walked out there that they were motion censored...so if you walked up to them they would turn off, so you could walk in to the middle of them. At first Jacob and Autumn went in and she was having fun trying to get them to "turn off"...

And then...she decided it would be fun to stick her head in the fountains!!  By the end she was running around the entire inside touching all the fountains as she went!!  She even had a crowd watching and laughing at the crazy wet little girl playing in the fountains :o)

Needless to say, she was pretty soaked by the time we dragged her away.  So wet in fact, her shoes are still drying as I write this!  Luckily it was right next to our hotel so we got her inside and dried off and into some warm dry clothes quickly because it was a bit chilly out.  I'm so surprised she even did it...whenever we went to play in the fountains here I had to coerce her to even touch them let alone stick her head in them...ha!  But I'm glad she was feeling brave, because it was so darn cute!

After we were dry and warm, we headed out for a quick night walk for one last view of Budapest. It was such a nice, clean, welcoming city and I would go back in a heartbeat...maybe Ryan airlines will have some more cheap flights and we'll get to spend some more time in splendid Budapest :o)

Click here to view the full Budapest album.

WOW....Dinosaurs!!

Ok, this post is going to be really quick because we're leaving for Budapest in an hour, but I wanted to sneak in a post about today's Wild About Wednesday. We went to the Museum of Natural Science and it was loads of fun!! If you have kids that love animals and/or dinosaurs...then you must check this place out!! It is huge...the exhibits are very well done, it's nice and clean, and if you go on a day when the other kids are in school you can have the whole place pretty much to yourself (except for 15-20 guards just sitting around doing nothing...haha)! It was awesome! Autumn got to run around and touch and see everything without me feeling like I had to stop her. It was super kid friendly and just a fun place for a quick morning out and about in Brussels. Here are some pictures for your enjoyment :o)

Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!  Off to Budapest...I'll be back with an update soon!

Fresh Fruit & Veggie Pickin'

Maren and family invited us to tag along last weekend as they visited an organic farm on the outskirts of Brussles called Marie's Garden.  It was such a lovely little farm with all sorts of tasty treats we got to pick ourselves!

Autumn's favorite part was the pint-sized wheelbarrows!

I am the only one that thought that word was wheelbarrel??  Apparently I was wrong!

Oh, and the wheelbarrow rides!! :o)

 Mommy & Autumn picking strawberries...yum!

Daddy & Autumn picking green beans

Attempting to find the perfect cucumber

Take time to stop and smell the flowers!

But the absolute best part of our visit to the farm (aside from spending time with our friends of course) was the huge zucchini we picked (which I didn't take a picture of for some reason)...that made this delicious chocolate cake!!  YUM!!

A Gorgeous Church on a Gorgeous Day

Yesterday's Wild About Wednesday was definitely one of my favorites!  I'm not sure if it was the beautiful blue sky day, that we practically had the place to ourselves, that there was LOTS of running around room for the little ones or what, but I really enjoyed our trip to the National Basilica of the Sacred Heart!

The Basilica is a very prominent point in the Brussels skyline so I knew I always wanted to go visit it and it did not disappoint.  Since it's in Brussels it was pretty easy/quick to get to...even if we did have to take two trams and one metro each way.  And once we arrived and were standing next to it...the place is HUGE (it's the fifth largest church in the world)!  Autumn and Brooklyn enjoyed running around the lovely fenced in grounds.

They are those two little specks in the picture above :o)  After lots of running around we decided to head indoors.  The inside is stunning if nothing more than for its sheer size.  It felt sort of modern and old at the same time...Andi and I had a bet going on when it was built (I won...I guessed 1894 and it was 1880, but I'm not bragging...hehe :o)  Here are some pictures of the inside...

After wandering around the impressive downstairs we paid 5 euros and were headed to the top!!  It was so easy...even with strollers as they had a lift.  And the panoramic views from the top were amazing!  We wandered around the top several times enjoying looking down on Brussels bustling city in all directions.  It was lovely...my pictures don't do it justice at all!

Autumn and Brooklyn had fun running around and climbing around the top.

I loved our trip to the Basilica and I would definitely recommend it to all our Brussels friends looking for a fun, cheap outing around the city.