Hotel Normafa

We left home at the grumpy, miserable, crack-of-dawn. Our taxi driver to the airport had verbal diarrhea and would not shut up the whole way. We bitched and miserabled through the huge Pesach lines, and finally made it onto the plane without bwo dropping more than a month's salary at the duty free. Finally we were off and winging our way over the mountains to Budapest.

On disembarking, we noticed this sign painted on the ElAl plane's side (for the non-Hebrew, it basically tells Israelis to try behave well overseas). We collected our luggage and found a taxi to take us to Hotel Normafa.

Now the Normafa is a story in itself . A few days back, bwo and I had a huge row over this (I was just rattling the cage as usual) as the hotel was on the wrong side of town, too far away from the center etc. But when she called to cancel they sent such a kind email we decided we would book there anyway. The taxi drove and drove, we passed through the center of the city, crossed the Danube and kept driving. This guy was the opposite of our Israeli taxi driver, perfectly groomed, but not a word. We started up the hills on the Buda side, and kept climbing. It seems the Hotel Normafa not really in Budapest at all, but on the top of a hill, on the edge of a nature reserve, overlooking the city.

Our room was not ready so we fed the starving family. The restaurant made us a to-order veggie plate with some sort of salty fried cheese , excellent. We then all took delicious naps .

On awaking we took a walk in the nature reserve, and found our way to the little local supermarket. Hungarian is a strange language that has no resemblance to anything recognizable, check out the instant soups . On the way back from the store we stopped to admire the view .

We passed a little hut with a line of locals buying some sort of delicacy . They are called retesek, and are sort of like a rolled up crepe with filling. They cost about a dollar a piece and we were encouraged by the locals to try all four types . They're filled with cheese (like cheese cake), berries, plums and poppy seed (yuck). We sat on a park bench, licked our fingers and enjoyed the view.

We walked back to the hotel. The elevator has a mirrored roof. We're having big fun but missing the boy, who went to Auschwitz today.