Wonderful Week!

This has been a wonderful week! We have had a great time with Kari and Jonathan and hate to see them return to France on Saturday. In the meantime, we are taking advantage of every moment to do as much as we can, and for starters, we made homemade ice cream. Do folks do that anymore in America?


Ice for sale at the local gas station!

We can buy ice at Tesco (British version of Walmart) for $1.50 a bag or $2.50 at the nearby Shell gas station. (I would do better to buy the ice at the gas station because I spend way more than a dollar each time I go to the grocery store!) Seeing those freezers full of bags of ice is one of those rare things that remind me of life in America but that seems so out of place here. It just kind of surprises me since the Hungarians, like most Europeans, don't use ice in their drinks. Makes me wonder what they do with bags of ice!



Another thing we can buy here that I don't get is a version of salsa but I have yet to see anything on a restaurant menu that resembles tacos or nachos. Why do they sell salsa? I think it is because of all the Americans in the country so they import it for them. A small jar that holds about 1 1/2 cups costs about $2.75 and is sweet rather than hot. We make our own from scratch. Well, from peppers and tomatoes.



Glenn and Jonathan spent an hour slicing and dicing all the ingredients for the salsa and cooked it outside one evening to keep our kitchen from getting so hot. YUM! It is so good.

Kari has been spoiling us by cooking all of her specialties for us. She made us some orange glazed sweet yeast rolls for breakfast one morning. How can someone so young be such a good cook? She has a great recipe blog that she updates regularly. It is kind of like a recipe book of all her great recipes. In fact, I have encouraged her to publish her own cookbook because I think they are so good! I also tell all my friends here in Europe about her recipe blog because the recipes call for scratch ingredients that we can get here, whereas recipe books in the U.S. call for things like Lipton Onion Soup packets, Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix, Velveeta cheese, etc., all of which are not available in our part of the world.

Isn't she beautiful?

Well, in addition to cooking for us, Glenn and I have put Kari and Jonathan to work helping with various projects around our house and up at the Eden House ever since they arrived (today Jonathan transplanted a rose bush for me) so we decided they deserved a break (and we wanted one too) so we went into downtown on Saturday for the day.

With book in hand, we went on one of the 5 walking tours with Glenn as our trusted guide. We took the tour through Watertown, on the bank of the Danube River.

I loved this row boat tied to a bigger boat next to the sightseeing sign. Some expensive sightseeing tour!

I was amazed at the layers of stucco over the rock walls. Some of these buildings are 200-300 years old, and look it too! I love the "oldness" of the buildings.

Kari loved the flowers and taking "creative" pictures.

Jonathan and I look closely at the layers of rock and stone.

We saw lots and lots and lots of statues of famous people...

...and the head of a statue lying on the front stoop of a building in disrepair. A little later we saw a statue that was missing its' head in someone's yard. How does one go about getting an old statue for their yard? I'd love to have one. Is there a graveyard for old statues from a hundred years ago???

Saw several old churches; some were beautiful!

Saw engraved pictures on the fronts of some of the buildings above or beneath windows.

Walked through a couple of small parks tucked in and among neighborhoods and admired the beautiful flowers, bushes and trees. Saw these 3 two liter bottles filled with water, inverted and stuck in the dirt around the roots of a recently planted tree. Never seen this before. Have you?

And of course, a walk through town would not be complete without a pass in front of Parliament.

Kari pulled up Google Earth and calculated that we walked about 6 miles on our tour.

We enjoyed watching the sun go down toward the end of our long walk. It was only when the sun started setting that the weaather cooled off!

After walking for several hours, we took a small detour to one of our favorite ice cream places. Not only is their ice cream delicious, but it is also beautiful! They make them look like roses with petals.

After all that walking, we desperately needed somewhere to sit to rest our weary feet and backs. Kari and Jonathan found a place!

We got home that evening and collapsed in front of the T.V.. I don't think I moved out of my chair all night!

Sunday morning we went to the Danube International Church because their worship service is in English and we thought Kari and Jonathan would enjoy worshipping in English once again. Yes, Kari and Jonathan would enjoy it...and so would Glenn and me! They are currently meeting in a public high school.

I must admit-this was the first time I've ever gone to church with a disco ball hanging from the ceiling! It added a little pizzaz to the setting.

After church the Doyles invited us out to lunch as their guests. We went to this quaint little Hungarian restaurant about 4 miles from our house.

Tomorrow night we are taking them on a dinner cruise down the river. Later in the week is the biggest national holiday and we'll be in the middle of all the food, fireworks and festivities! I'll have lots of pictures to show you next Sunday. Give you something to look forward to, I hope!