After Zagreb, we spent three nights in Budapest, Hungary. We arrived on New Year's Eve (a Tuesday), and left on Friday, January 3rd.
Our B&B was a small, basic, and somewhat grungy one a fair distance from the city centre, on the Buda side, as it was just too expensive to stay in the heart of Budapest over New Year's. However, it afforded us a good view of the many NYE fireworks displays on the hills around the city; they went on for hours!
Unfortunately, this part of the trip was my turn to be feeling under the weather, so we didn't do most of the sightseeing I'd had in mind. But here's what we did get up to...
On two of the three nights, we walked to a restaurant at another B&B about 20 minutes from ours. Both times we had interesting and tasty Hungarian meals, and Finley spent a lot of time charming the manager!
On Thursday afternoon we rode the Children's Railway (Gyermekvasút) up in the Buda Hills. This is not a railway FOR children... but a railway RUN BY children! (With the exception of the train driver and - I think - some supervisors.) Children's railways were a popular "extracurricular educational institution" in the Soviet era, and there are still a number of them operating in eastern Europe today.
The railway is 11.2 km long, but we only rode part of it as otherwise we would miss the last train back. The view from the train wasn't particularly exciting, but it was an interesting experience, and Finley enjoyed holding hands with one of the teenage conductors (photo below)! One of the best parts was watching the young staff line up and salute the train as we departed from each station. We didn't manage to get a good photo of them all doing it, but one boy held the salute for long enough that we caught it in one of the shots below.
Budapest was originally two cities, Buda and Pest, with the Danube River dividing them. After our train ride, we parked near the Danube on the Pest side and walked along on foot beside the river. It was dark by this time and we had the vague idea of taking a boat tour, but the area was fairly deserted and we didn't find anything suitable. As we drove back to our B&B, first on the Pest side and then on the Buda side of the river, we enjoyed some breathtaking views of Budapest's most famous buildings.
City sights as seen from the Pest side...
Gellert Hill
Buda Castle
Buda Castle
Matthias Church and Fisherman's Bastion
Matthias Church and Fisherman's Bastion
Hungarian Parliament Building
And from the Buda side...
Hungarian Parliament Building
Hungarian Parliament Building
And that was all we really saw of Budapest... I hardly feel like I've been there at all! Oh well, we'll just have to go again... ;)
On December 27th, we farewelled Peter, Rosi, Kat, Trev, Sharon, Matt and Dan, and set off for Lake Bled, Slovenia, where we would be spending the night en route to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia.
Before leaving Austria, however, we stopped for lunch in the town of Schladming, which is a special place for us... as it's where Ben proposed to me! (He proposed during our trip to Europe with his family and our friends for Matt and Kat's wedding in mid 2006. The scenic mountainous region of Austria where their wedding was held is a couple of hours from Peter's house.)
Once we arrived in Schladming (which was much more of a ski resort town than the romantic little mountain village of my memories!), of course we tried to re-trace our steps from that memorable day 7.5 years ago. :)
First, Ben went to the booth where he thought he had purchased the newspaper from that day. They were all sold out of die Kleine Zeitung (the "Little Newspaper") though!
Then, we headed to the bench seat where the actual proposal had taken place. Alas, the seat was gone... and on that street corner there was now some sort of bar or nightclub!! Again, it was more romantic in my memories...
This was the spot...
...but there was definitely no club behind us back then!
7.5 years later, and now we are three! :D
Then we went and ate lunch in the restaurant where we'd eaten lunch that day (pre-proposal) with all the guests that had arrived so far for the next day's wedding. The restaurant was completely different inside to the layout we vaguely recalled - I guess it had been renovated. However, the waitresses still wore the traditional Austrian dress like we remembered. And the meal was yummy!
Schladming pedestrian zone
Outside the restaurant
My lunch
After a bit of wandering through the shops and streets of Schladming, it was time to carry on towards Slovenia.
Hours later, after darkness had fallen and as we approached our destination, we were wondering if the GPS was leading us up the garden path! We were driving on little residential roads on the side of a mountain, with no lights of a township in sight. Luckily, I already knew that Bled was a small town and that our B&B was a little way outside it, so we carried on. And thankfully our GPS was right on the mark!
The next morning, after eating breakfast and packing up, we went outside and finally saw the stunning setting of our B&B. It was surrounded by green fields and quaint houses, with a sizeable snow-covered mountain rising up in the distance and peeking through a layer of cloud in the bright blue sky. Slovenia looked to be a very beautiful country indeed!
B&B
There's a huge mountain there somewhere...
Down in the town, we drove slowly around the edge of famous Lake Bled, gaping in awe at the spectacular view. Across the lake, an island monastery rose out of the still water above its shimmering reflection. Off to the side, we could see a massive château perched atop a rocky cliff, with an imposing snow-capped mountain in the background.
We had time to stop and take a few quick photos, but wanted to make the most of Finley's nap time to cover some ground towards Zagreb... so we couldn't stay and take a horse and carriage ride around the lake, or a boat ride out to the island, like a handful of other tourists were doing. But WOW - what a gorgeous place!
Photos taken by Ben from the edge of the lake...
Phone snaps taken by me from the back seat as we drove...
After leaving Bled, we crossed the border from Slovenia into Croatia, and broke up the drive by spending a couple of hours in a random but unremarkable Croatian town.
In the late afternoon, we arrived in the capital city, Zagreb, where our hotel in the city centre would be home for the next 3 nights. To be continued...
As this was Delle's and Roxy's first ever winter Christmas, we wanted to give them a proper white Christmas experience... i.e. actual snow, not just the cold and rain we could expect from a Vancouver Christmas. So, we spent the three nights of the Christmas weekend up at Whistler, BC. The four of us were joined by our friend Heidi from Vancouver, and we had just the wonderful, magical, SNOWY white Christmas we had hoped for!
In a convoy of our car and Heidi's car, we drove the 1.5 hours north to Whistler early on Friday afternoon, December 23rd.
Our accommodation for the next three nights was a fully self-contained suite on the top floor of a B&B in Pemberton, a small town half an hour from Whistler. This turned out to be an absolutely incredible place to stay. It had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a stocked kitchen, a warm and welcoming Spanish/Mexican theme, and an outdoor hot tub. And it was MUCH cheaper than anything else I could find around Whistler over Christmas. An absolute gem that we hope to return to sometime!
The street we stayed on
Our lovely suite took up the entire top floor of this house
Across the street from us
You may observe that many of the photos in this post (eg. the first one below) look a bit different to usual. This is because, at the time, I was obsessed with a new retro camera app I'd downloaded on my Android phone. I quite like the cosy feel it gives to our Christmas photos though!
Dining table and archway through to kitchen
Roxy, Delle, Heidi, me
The present pile!!
The living room
Making dinner (Heidi's photo)
On Saturday (Christmas Eve), we headed to Whistler to spend the day snowboarding (except for Heidi, who explored the Village instead). Delle and Roxy had just started learning to snowboard during the previous couple of weeks, so getting to use their new skills at the largest ski resort in North America was quite a thing!
Here's a video taken as we left our B&B to head to Whistler that morning...
After parking and suiting up at the base of Blackcomb Mountain, we clomped across to the base of Whistler Mountain, as that was the one where I could be guaranteed a chairlift-free day. Then, the four of us rode a gondola high up into the hills to begin our slow and (for most of us) somewhat painful descent back down the mountain!
Delle, Roxy, me
Making our way up Whistler Mountain
Beautiful trees!
Delle and Rox
Us
It took us a couple of hours to get down to the bottom of the mountain again, and by then it was time to meet Heidi for lunch!
Me
Roxy
Roxy
Roxy again... and no, she didn't spend the whole day posing!
She also fell over a lot.
It's just that I'm too nice to post photos of that...
Beautiful, beautiful snow
Me
Roxy... posing again
Ben, Delle and Roxy... taken one of the many times we stopped
for Ben to make adjustments to the girls' boards!
Base of Whistler Mountain
As above
A handsome snowboarder
Me
Lunchtime... Ben, Heidi, Delle, Roxy
(Delle's photo)
(Delle's photo)
After lunch, we headed back up Whistler in the same gondola, but at the top we parted ways with Ben. The plan was that he would make his way down the mountain at his own (much faster than us) pace. And just for fun, we three girls would ride the Peak 2 Peak gondola across to Blackcomb Mountain and back (an 11 minute trip each way), and then start making our way down Whistler Mountain, meeting Ben somewhere along the way.
Here are some photos from the stunning Peak 2 Peak ride...
Gondola girls
Upon returning to Whistler, and Delle being cornered by a tourism representative and completing a survey, we decided to snowboard down the mountain rather than taking the gondola halfway down and starting from there. In hindsight, we should have taken the latter option, as it was approaching dusk and lift-closing-time (3:30pm), we were still a number of kilometres up the mountain, and Roxy in particular (as the newest snowboarder) was pretty tired.
However, if we had made that sensible decision, Roxy never would have experienced what it's like to be towed down Whistler on a toboggan pulled by a hunky Ski Patrol guy...
Don't worry, she wasn't hurt... just exhausted (and slow). No doubt
the Ski Patrol guys just wanted to clear the slopes and go home!
Back at our suite in Pemberton, it was time for some hot spiced apple cider and a soak in the outdoor hot tub, surrounded by snow. Bliss!
(Delle's photo)
(Delle's photo)
On Sunday, Christmas Day, we headed out of town on a short drive to the nearest meeting. We ended up staying for a few hours afterwards, eating snacks and chatting!
(Heidi's photo)
Back at our suite in the afternoon, it was time to finally upwrap our presents. We had all agreed to get presents for each other, and it was a lot of fun to open them. Thanks everyone!
One of Ben's Christmas/ anniversary gifts from me...
a dozen personalised Jones sodas
My Christmas present from Ben...
...A six-string banjo!!
Next on the agenda was Christmas dinner... roast turkey with cranberry sauce and veggies. Yum! While waiting for it to cook, we staved off our hunger with all the chocolate we'd just unwrapped, and played Ben's new charades-type board game.
Turkey, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots
Adding the mushrooms, broccoli, and more cranberry sauce
Gluhwein on the way
Christmas dinner
The next morning, it was time to pack up and drive home. Thanks to all for an extremely wonderful Christmas weekend!
