During the week, our dear friend Nicola visited for literally only 24 hours. She's a great friend who used to live here with here husband. While living here, their first daughter, Hannah, was born. After only a short couple of years and lots and lots of fun, they had to relocate (boo hoo). This is the expat life...
The reason for her short return was to check in on her apartment in town. She had a tenant that recently moved out and wanted to check in on what work needed to be done to it before renting it out again in September. Lucky for us she's letting Curt's nephew, Stephen and his buddy, live their rent free for the summer. I guess it all works out as we've had a lot of her stuff in storage in our warehouse rent-free. What comes around, goes around.
So, she left her 2 babies (her second one was born a year after she returned to England) behind with the nanny and came over to Budapest for work and fun.
During the evening we decided to hit one of our favorite squares - St Istvan Basilica. It's where the big church is where all 3 of our babies got christened. The square and setting are just beautiful. There are a few bar / cafes where you can sit out and take in the incredible European scenery that I love so much.
Nicky and I had planned to meet up with our friend, Kim Cooper, and got to the restaurant first. Within 2 minutes of sitting down and ordering our bottle of champagne, someone walked up to me and half shouted, "Erika!". I looked up to find my dear old friend Kim Maly who moved away from Budapest in 2002 to return to her Australian roots. I knew she was in town and Curt and I had already made plans to see her tonight (Saturday). On Wednesday, when we ran into each other, she had plans to meet up with another friend, Karin, for her birthday. Since she got their first and was alone I insisted she join in on our champagne to begin the birthday celebration.
Well, one drink turned into two and before we knew it they invited us to join them at Cafe Kor (one of my favorite restaurants in town) for dinner.
It turned out to be a fantastic night and even the the 2 friends I came with and the 2 friends I ran into didn't know each other, we all had a great time! They, of course, realized they knew of each other and as expat life goes had one or two degrees of separation.
Here are some of the snaps from the evening. It was chillier than usual and very windy as you can tell from the photos.
Left: Kim C, Nicky and me. Right: Kim M and me
Nicky with a cut out from the paper. She got it for her Scottish hubby who drives but has yet to get his license! Right now he's working in Ukraine where it's illegal for him to drive as a foreigner so he has a car with a chauffeur that was part of his employment package. This is very common in many parts of the world.
The 5 of us and me with Nicky
Dinner at Kor. Nothing but delicious every time.
Gabor, the owner, who knows all of us too well as we are all frequent customers. He became extra popular at the end of the evening as he insisted on paying for all of our drinks throughout the evening.
Not wanting the evening to end. Since 3 of us had babies to wake up to in the am, we headed home. The other 2 continued on from the restaurant. Crazy girls!