Budapest Hungary (Friday, May 22, 2009)

Budapest Hungary (Friday, May 22, 2009)

We arrived safely in Budapest after getting up at 3:30 a.m., get a 4:30 a.m. taxi to the Tel Aviv airport. We arrived at 5:00 a.m. at the airport and had to go through several security checks. We were concerned about making our 7:05 a.m. El Al flight, but we made it with much time to spare.

Four hours later and 1 hour earlier time zone we arrived at the Budapest airport, went through customs and took a shared mini-cab to hotel, Helia. Budapest is a city with lots of character, but is significantly older than Tel Aviv and Haifa in appearance and seemingly in need of more repairs. The roads that the taxi took were very narrow and we nearly hit some parked cars and had to come to a complete stop when a car or truck ahead stopped on the single lane roads. We can look out of our Helia hotel room at the beautiful Danu River with the boats traveling up and down the river.

The currency is called the Hungarian Forint (HUF) and one gets around 176 HUF for each US dollar. So $10.00 is 1,760 HUFs and $50.00 is 8,827 HUFs. I feel like I am using play money when I look at prices in the thousand of HUFs for a taxi ride. I have 5,000 HUF bill in my wallet. Jackie and I took the Budapest subway to a tourist shopping area called Vici street and went to the famous Gerbeaud Pastry Shop for some pastries. We walked down Vici Street after having some pastries and then took the subway back to the hotel. It allowed us to get some confidence in getting around Budapest with the strange street names (Dozsa Gyogy Ut., Deak Fereno Ut.), a subway system that was new to us and to find our way after getting off the subway. We also purchased a Budapest card at the airport that gives us discounts on some things for three days including free rides on the subway.

We looked around the hotel spa area and ran into my cousin Gordon Hirsch who came in a day before us. He asked to use my laptop computer to write an e-mail. He and his wife, Lou, came by to use the computer and we plan on going to dinner together tonight.

After dinner we checked to see if Gordon’s older brother, Steven Hirsch, had arrived. They had not arrived, but then we saw Steven and Linda Hirsch coming into the hotel and just arriving from Washington DC. Linda was checking in and is not on the photo.

We are expecting other Hirsch in, my sister and my aunt, Doris Moss, to be arriving in the next 24 hours.