Debrecen, Hungary ... November 29, 2008

We have lived in Budapest for 2 1/2 year now and the entire time we have been here we have always said we have plenty of time to visit the Hungarian cities. With that attitude we have traveled plenty around Europe, but never really around Hungary. We decided to spend the weekend in Debrecen, a city about 2 hours from Budapest towards the Romanian/Ukranian border. They have an indoor waterpark there, so that was basically the original logic. It helped that five other families were willing to join us (The Clarke's, the Birnbaum's, the Johnson's, the Kratky's, and the Chapman's). We all left Saturday morning separately, at everyone's own pace. We left around 8:30. It took us a little while for some reason to get out of Budapest (we live close to the Motorway to Vienna but are on the opposite side of the city from the Motorway to Debrecen), but we made it to Debrecen by around 11:30. We got a little lost trying to find our hotel, but eventually stumbled upon it, just when we were ready to give up. We had wanted to stay at the hotel that is connected to the waterpark, but that was full. Fortunately for us, though, as instead we got a perfect hotel right off the Central Square and still just down the road from the waterpark. We checked in, dropped our stuff off and headed to the park. It is a nice place, perfect for the girls. It has a number of small pools and six or seven slides of different difficulty levels. I took the girls on the tallest slide. I went down with Ashley, and Katie followed on her own. I should have been more careful because as we started going pretty fast and, since I was unfamiliar with the twists and turns, we took an unpredictable turn and Ashley banged her head on the wall. Of course she was fine with it, but I figured I had better be more careful the next time.
We went down a few more slides. I let Ashley go down on her own on a few of them. One time I went first and waited for Katie and Ashley to follow. I waited at the bottom for what seemed like forever. Finally I could see Katie at the top, waiting to go. I motioned to her to go, thinking that she had just been waiting for me to give the goahead and Ashley was going to go after Katie. I hadn't realized that Ashley had gone down already and suddenly I see her coming out of the slide at about 1 mile/hour (she must have been SLOWLY making her way down the slide this entire time). Then suddenly comes Katie at full speed and they run into each other. Ashley, no big deal. Katie, she made it seem as if she had just been hit by a semi. But ultimately they were ok. We ate lunch then went back to the children's pool and just hung out. At one point I noticed that Ashley was not in the pool anymore. The more I looked the more panic we felt. Heather and I started searching the park, but she was nowhere to be found. Our friends began to look and after a few minutes one of them comes back with Ashley. She had decided she was going to go on the slides by herself. She had made her way to the largest slide and actually had gone down it a few times before she was found by our friend! She is seriously FEARLESS! We were obviously not happy about it though.
After a while we decided to head back to the hotel, where we changed and got ready for dinner. We decided to meet everyone at Vapiano, a wonderful Italian place where they cook the pasta fresh in front of you, making it a good hybrid of fast food/sit down Italian. And a very kid friendly atmosphere for European standards. Ashley's birthday was December 1, so we decided to have a little celebration of cupcakes. Admittedly, we probably should not have done it at the restaurant, but it was convenient. Heather brought cupcakes and after dinner we sang Happy Birthday and ate cupcakes. They made a mess on the floor, but I think I tipped them enough to cover it. And Ashley was delighted to be sung to! On our way back from the restaurant we walked through the Christmas Market that had just opened for the first day of the season. In fact, just when we arrived back from the waterpark we happened upon the turning on of the lights, so we got to see that wonderful sight. I love this time of year and the European Christmas Markets make it even more fun. It was especially nice as the weather was fantastic and the lights wonderful to behold. We ate a cinnamon covered roasted bread (a Hungarian Christmas specialty), bought an ornament and a wooden horse for Ryan before crossing the street to our hotel and going to bed.