LIVE from Chopper 9

This morning, Ryan informed me that 'a surprise' was happening. Now, I'm not big on surprises but I just might be jaded from my last surprise (it was yesterday and it involved meatloaf and several trips to the restroom).

I wasn't sure what to expect. The only 'hint' he gave me was that 'he was nervous' which, if you know him, really isn't a hint at all. 'Nervous' can mean being at McDonald's and hearing him say 'do you think she really understood me when I asked for FOUR ketchups'? I tried getting it out of him before we left but he flipped on the 'stubborn as a mule' switch (which included a big smile) and I had to wait. We went down the elevator, out of the hotel, and walked up to our ride:
That's right. Ryan booked a helicopter city tour of Budapest. I've never been in a helicopter and it has always been an interest of mine so needless to say I was pretty happy . We've talked about it in the past (like, say, in Vegas when there is a steady stream of people on the street trying to stuff heli-tour pamphlets in your face) but he was never really into it. I think some merlot might have aided his decision to book online a couple months ago.

We got to the city limits and pulled up to the first European airport ever constructed (in 1936... and it looked like it), and then walked up to our plane:
We got inside, put on our headsets (I was sure to instruct Ryan not to break into a rendition of 'Holiday' by Madonna) and strapped ourselves in. Now, I was getting really excited. Ryan on the other hand... well, he was excited too but I'm pretty sure you could have slipped a lump of coal into his asshole and had a diamond by the time we did our 20 minute loop. Here's a picture of our pilot and a little video of us taking off:

We did a loop around around the city and over the Danube. Here are some pictures:
Once we got back to the hotel, we freshened up (one of us changed our underwear, I'll let you guess who) and then went for a low-carb, low-cal lunch:
Like, seriously. How is it that people from America are the ones with a weight issue when people eat like this here. It's insane! In one of our travel books, they say that the average Hungarian eats 1 lb. of lard per week. I can't say I'm surprised. Neither can my pants.

From there we went to the House of Terror. It's the building that the Nazi party performed a lot of their torture in. Zoltan, our tour guide from yesterday told us that before WWII, there were 900,000 Jews living in Budapest and more than 600,000 of them were shipped to Auschwitz. Pretty humbling, touring around the building. The downside was that most of it was in Hungarian so a lot of it was lost on us. Though it would have been good to fully understand everything, I need you to understand that a good Tide commercial gets me going. Maybe it's just as well.
After that, we went to the Great Market Hall here in the city. It was a lot of genuine, Hungarian goods and overpriced, touristy bits including embroidered everything, paprika, wooden toys, and a hell of a lot of meat. Apart from the edible things, we felt like we were in our Grandmas' basements:
We're back at the hotel and walked in to find another little surprise... but this one was good too. Maybe I should get into surprises.