Jim 5/7/09 Yesterday and today was our big adventure in getting around Hungary on public transportation. Mary Anne and I are feeling pretty satisfied with our ability to navigate and use the trolley, the metro and the railroad to travel to Lake Balaton (probably about 130 miles). We know we owe Gene Weisner a big thank you for guiding us and also looking up the train schedule on the computer. There may also have been a bit of dumb (Irish) luck involved but we will ignore that fact. Yesterday we got up about 6:15 AM and caught the trolley and then the #2 metro to the Deli train station on the Buda side of the river. Then we bought a couple of cups of very strong coffee that completely wired us. We bought tickets and took ... read more

Thursday AM 6/4/2009 Well we arrived in Budapest. We flew from the Twin Cities to Amsterdam and everything was on time and comfortable. The flight was about 8 hours. We than had about a 3 hour layover and a 1 hour and 40 min. flight to Budapest. Got a cab into Budapest and made it to our flat. They seem to have about 50% of the streets dug up in Budapest so a 20 min. taxi ride can take twice as long. Our flat is on Pest side of the side of the river. It is about 2 blocks to the old market and about 2 blocks to the river and the trolley that runs along side of the river. There are no cars allowed on our street. The market is absolutely a great place to ... read more

We got up and started making the arrangements to fly home. We had to go through American Airlines (Quanta’s Partner). Of course the call went to India. The lady on the phone was very nice but inexperienced since it was her first day. It took about 3 hours to get everything booked. We were very fortunate to be able to rebook our flights for the next day. We then booked a flight from Wellington to Auckland and Ron & Sylvia drove use to the Wellington Airport the next morning. Talk about the luck of the Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. Not only did we get the flights we wanted but Quanta’s was running a $59.00 special from Wellington to Auckland and we were able to check our baggage all the way through to LA. I cannot ... read more

We drove from Invercargill to Dunedin today. Dunedin is a beautiful College Town (University of Otago). It has a large medical school. It was a beautiful drive through the Catlins. We stopped at the little town of Milton to visit Richard (Sylvia’ son). He is a nice guy who has been flooded out twice in the last 4 years. Unfortunately everything sort of caught up with Juanita. She was totally exhausted. Then she started to have a physical and emotional melt down from the busy travel schedule and Frontal Temporal Dementia (FTD). So we decided to come home as soon as possible. Unfortunately we could not have been much further from Auckland and still be in New Zealand. We would have to drive to Christchurch (350K), stay over- night and then drive to the Ferry in ... read more

We went to Milford Sound today. It is everything they talk about as you can see from the pictures. We went out for 2 hours on the boat. It is about 7 miles up Milford Sound to the Tasman Sea and 7 back. The weather was perfect which is very unusual. The boat held about 500 and I don’t think there was more than 20 on the boat and only 4 of us on the top level. The road from Te Anau to Milford was beautiful with a two mile tunnel. The Kiwi word for the day is Metal Road, we call it a gravel road. Don’t ask me where they get the term Metal Road. ... read more