Six Ladies+One Wilson=Budapest

I've never been really good at math, but this equation worked out just fine. I had the distinct pleasure of spending my first visit to Budapest with a phenomenal group of women. We laughed, shopped, and ate Mexican food. Pretty much a perfect weekend...I'm sure Jen could've used more sleep though.

We left Belgrade (the morning after Team Thanksgiving) in a ginormous van. It was mostly empty except for us and Randi's delicious Banana muffins. We were on the road by 7:30am and managed to make it all the way to the border with no issues. After waiting in line for what seemed like forever we handed over our passports and raised our hands as the customs official did a head count. We left the Serbian border and moved on to the Hungarian one; where we actually had a guy open the door and knock on the door panels to make sure we weren't smuggling anything.

On the way back we didn't have any customs issues which was a huge answer to prayer. Wilson was fidgety and we had packed all of our purchases into every square inch. It would've been a nightmare to empty the van and find receipts for everything.

So we had a day and a half in Budapest and managed to hit two malls, a Tesco, Ikea, have Mexican food and shop one more Tesco-like place in that time. I plan on going back to actually see more of Budapest, but the shopping can't be beat. Especially when the exchange rate was something like 230 forint (Hungarian currency) to every American dollar. Things are much cheaper than they are in Belgrade as well, so it makes sense that everyone does their shopping there. We heard quite a lot of Serbian spoken actually. So enjoy some photos of our mini shopping vacation. I'll also have a post dedicated to legit Mexican food and a Foto Friday born out of this trip. Get ready.

The Gellert Hotel

I included this photo because if you look across the crosswalks you can see the two rule followers Randi and Julie. They refused to cross the street on red. Which is why the rest of us left them behind in the cold on a strange Hungarian street.

This is the Mamut mall. Mamut apparently means Mammoth or something like that.

I say that because they had mammoths everywhere. I took a photo of these because they reminded me of Ice Age when they have their little baby. If only they had Sid hanging around somewhere...

They also had mammoth parts in glass cases all over the mall. Apparently they found a skeleton somewhere around here when they were doing construction and some clever individual decided to make that the mall's theme.

This is Wilson chilling in the recliner after a hard day shopping.

This a photo of half of the Tesco on steroids. I can't remember its name at the moment, but it was huge.

At the very last store, Wilson and I were left alone while his mother went off for socks and everyone else finished up their shopping. I began to notice that he was awfully interested in the floor in front of the buggy. As I leaned over I could see that he was drooling onto the floor and watching as the puddle expanded. I just scooted the buggy back as if the drool lake didn't exist. I'm going to be a wonderful mother.

This is the last food court we ate in. Looks almost like home, huh? Check out those swell Christmas decorations hanging from the ceiling. This is also where the drool puddle was.

These photos may not be riveting, but I had to get them out of the way so I could display the more fantastic ones in later posts. Up next? Mexican food heaven.