Wild about Austin: Odds and ends

Currency has been a real challenge over the last few weeks. First there was the Norwegian Kroner($5 = 30 NOK) which I then traded for Czech krona ($5= 97CZK) then for Euro in Vienna ($5= roughly €4) then to Hungarian($5=1,140 Florint). I gotta tell you it gets confusing. It seems wrong to pay 500 units for a bottle of water but....Dinner last night cost thousands! Because we ate in a place that can only be described as posh. Rococo everywhere. I had catfish ravioli as an appetizer, second course was chilled peach soup , then veal stew in a sauce to die for.

It was called the New York Cafe. The pictures don't do it justice.

Anyway, it was great. It kinda made up for all those grocery store and McDonald's meals.
In other news we went to the zoo for some reason. The amazing thing was how close you could get to the animals. I saw this guy on the left put an apple he brought into the mouth of this giant rhino. I caught this shot right afterwards when he was giving the rhino a quick pet. Unreal.

This is me petting a dromedary which has two humps with cute tufts on them. They are really friendly and soft too!

Look at those cute hump tufts.

These guys were soliciting snacks from everybody who walked by.

There were lots of baby animals like this giraffe, an elephant, lions cubs, and baby monkeys. Although she liked the babies, overall Barb rated the zoo a C+.

Really though, these guys were the best in my opinion. Too sweet.

One more thing we did on our last day in Budapest was take a boat cruise down the Danube. This time it really was blue and oh so beautiful. Now I see what the hub-bub was about.

The very last thing I want to tell you about Budapest is that they have special pigs there that are wooly like sheep. I know this because a sausage company had a booth in the airport with a stuffed mangalica (Hungarian pig).