Hello (again) Budapest.

We were thrilled, nervous, excited, anxious to finally arrive in Budapest.
Were we going to like it as when we visited in 2012? We'd only spent 2 nights in Budapest, previously. It's interesting the narratives we can build in our minds about a city after only spending 48 hours in a place.

A well-placed and accurate mirror.

We were met at the airport by a driver with a fancy sign, "Nancy Perzel".  I wanted to complain, but quickly accepted that it's not about me (unfortunately) and Fancy's position is what allowed us to move to Budapest -- but would it have been too much to include my name on the sign?  Despite my strong objection, Fancy would not allow me to take a photo, either.  We barely fit all 8 (who am I kidding, we probably had more) of our bags in our driver's euro-sized car.  But, I've always been good at jigsaw puzzles, and with bags in both of our laps, we just barely fit.

There was nothing especially eventful about our arrival into Budapest, but still a singular moment that can never be forgotten.  It was an event with such anticipation and now it was finally here.  It was close to sunset, the air felt good on our skin after a long day of travel confinement, it was somewhat humid which reminded us of home.

We had departed Atlanta, Georgia around 9:30pm EST and had arrived in Budapest, Hungary about 18:00 local time.  We were 8200km [5095 miles] from home.  I'll do the conversions this once, but after that ladies and gentlemen, we will be your weekly dose of the metric system.  I anticipate to post more frequently than weekly, but don't want to set the bar too high.

We left the airport and headed into the city.  Reading the signage into the city, I was convinced in the first 3 minutes that this language was someone's practical joke.  Apparently not.  This language was going to be more difficult that we'd imagined.

The school reserved a studio apartment for us for the first week while we were apartment-hunting.  We were so happy to finally be at the end of our travel, we overlooked some of the apartments, shall we say, shortcomings.  Or at least, the shortcomings (documented in "Temporary Housing") that would present themselves as the days progressed.  Initially, we were stunned by the view -- it overlooked the Danube River at sunset.  Tonight, we were very happy to be in Budapest.