Monday, March 11, 2024
Today we joined our fellow travelers with the Hilliard Area Chamber for the next ten days. We would visit Budapest, Hungary, Vienna, Austria, Prague, Czech Republic, and Berlin, Germany.
We had three flights to get to Budapest. Our first flight was from Columbus to Atlanta. Our second flight was from Atlanta to Amsterdam and the last flight was from Amsterdam to Budapest.
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
It was our second day of travel when we landed in Amsterdam. Our third flight was about two hours to arrive in Budapest. Today was my birthday and I was surprised when the flight attendant brought me a small bottle of champagne with two glasses, a cookie, and card! It was quite a surprise. A big thank you to KLM airlines.
The majority of our group did not get our luggage when we arrived in Budapest! We’re exhausted from our lack of sleep and then we had to fill out forms for our lost luggage. Many of us had air tags in our bags so we knew exactly their location-still on the runway in Amsterdam. We always travel with extra clothes (2 days worth) in our carry on bag so we didn’t worry about clean clothes.
We met our tour director for the trip after we went through immigration. Karolina lived in Prague but took the bus to meet us in Budapest.
The bus picked the 13 of us up and took us to our hotel, NH Budapest City Hotel. It was a beautiful hotel and the staff was so friendly. Our rooms were ready and we had time to relax or take a walk before dinner.
I realized that our virtual friends accidentally were left in Amsterdam. Marina at the hotel desk was great and helped us recreate our friends.
Once our friends were ready, Dave and I walked to the Chain Bridge and went past parliament and then back to the hotel. Round trip was about 2 1/4 miles total.
Our tour director was told it was my birthday so at dinner I was surprised with a card signed by our travel group, a dessert with a lit candle and Happy Birthday was sung!
After dinner we were exhausted so we went to our room and it wasn’t long before we were sound asleep! The phone rang and it startled us out of a deep sleep. The hotel desk called to let us know that our luggage had arrived. It felt like the middle of the night but it was only 10:00 PM when the front desk called! It was nice to have our luggage earlier than expected because now we had our currency converter to charge our devices! We learned a valuable lesson to pack the converter in our carry on luggage. In all of our travels this was the first time both of our bags didn’t arrive at the airport with us! We even packed half of our clothes in each other’s suitcase. This was a great thing to do in case one suitcase didn’t arrive but unfortunately this was a unique situation.
We went back to sleep so we would be rested for our tour of Budapest!