This morning we did better...I lured all the kids into the “day-o-fun” relatively early and we left the apartment at 10 a.m. (almost all of us fed and actually ready for action.) I drove today, instead of walking, to try and conserve some energy so they didn’t poop out after 20 minutes. We went to the zoo, which by car was probably not more than 15 minutes away from where we are staying. It’s located in the City Park, which is a lovely greenspace with all kinds of things to do, but yes, lots of walking was going to be involved and it was a pretty warm day.
We bought tickets into the zoo and spent 3 hours in awe of how close they allow people to be to some of the animals. Many of them are in enclosed areas, but within those areas you can walk around in designated paths, and there are really simple low wood fences that keep you from the animals, but barely. There were some mini-ostrich looking things (there are no signs in English, so I’m guessing it was a mini-ostrich but have no idea), and they could easily just reach over the little fence and peck your eyes out. They didn’t, but I’m just saying. Other more clearly dangerous animals were fully caged obviously, but the cages were small---the lions for example, they looked positively depressed. Highlights included a butterfly that landed on Lucia in the butterfly arena, and some pretty darling monkeys which started a 30 minute discussion on why getting an exotic animal license and buying a monkey was NOT going to happen in our house.
After the zoo we hired a bright pink paddle boat and terrorized the small lake in the park. The kids wanted to rent it for hours, but eventually realized that you actually had to paddle, and it’s more work than they thought so it turned out, 30 minutes was plenty. It was fun though, we had a very nice time and no one fell overboard so I felt like it was a big win.
We then had a second visit to our now “favorite” Indian place…apparently Ava makes concessions for really amazing Indian places, then she’s willing to eat at the same place twice.
From there we picked up John from the airport, and then went straight to the Mystic Escape room, for our reservation that I had made early in the day. Apparently, it’s a big “thing” in Budapest…there are a purported 200 escapes room, and the rumor is that the concept started in this city. I have no idea if that is true, I didn’t bother to google it, but the kids were really excited at the idea of doing one. Romeo is the one that was NOT super excited—all connected to his fear of being in closed spaces and “locked in.” Quite honestly, it’s not really my thing either. I’m not big on puzzles, and hate feeling trapped. Still, I was a team player on this one, and soothed Romeo when he started to freak out and gave the game some love and attention. That being said, we never did fully figure out the puzzle, and did NOT escape within an hour (despite getting some hints along the way and some fairly specific direction at the end.) Finally John just said, “Ok, who wants to quit?” Definitely me. Unless the next clue was going to unlock a bottle of pinot, I was ready to get out. I’m pretty sure we just taught our kids how to bail when the times get tough. The game coordinator kept saying we did well, but then he actually said, “well, for some people if their brain is really effective, they don’t have trouble.” I don’t think he meant to say exactly that (something was lost in translation), but I had to agree with him, our brains were definitely NOT effective enough to finish the puzzle. OK, so I think that basically will wrap up Budapest…failing at an escape room, and being deemed as having an ineffective brain.
Tomorrow we’ll hit the road again, Vienna is next on the list. Had so much fun in this city, but already getting excited to see Vienna.
Signed, ME {lv}
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