Something Fishy This Way Comes

I think I'm going to be the only person to go backpacking around Europe and return having gained weight. This is probably because by "backpacking" I mean hauling my backpack out to the car every few days and the "around Europe" part seems to only mean that we lay around in various houses in Europe. In short, we've become super lazy. Yesterday Vaughn never even bothered to put on clothes and spent the entire day in his underwear. I told Jacob I thought that we were likely more active when we had sedentary, cubicle dwelling jobs.

So today we decided we were going to get out. The first stop was the Budapest Zoo and Botanical Gardens, which is one of the oldest zoos in Europe. With the exception of a pair of zebras who came over to a fence and interacted with us just like horses, the whole experience was semi-depressing as zoos often are. Jacob and Vaughn wanted to leave after just 20 minutes but I made them stick it out until we got to go see the cabybaras, Roger and Fruszina, and their three kids. I left with a sweet cabybara keychain that will find a home right next to the unicorn and my "Don't Mess With Texas" one.

After lunch it was off to fish pedicures. The treatments are done by submerging your feet in a small, individual tank with approximately 50 Garra rufa fish, a toothless carp that sloughs off your dead skin as part of its forging for food activities. We selected the 20 minute treatment but poor Jacob, who really didn't want to do it to begin with, had to pull his feet out after just 10 minutes. The hebbie-jebbie factor on this activity is high and every part of you wants to shake your feet to get the little buggers off. At times it tickles but at other times it feels like you've got little electric wires poking you and it's particularly disconcerting when they go to town on a really tender area like that hollow part behind your ankle bone. Mostly I was disappointed because they aren't particularly thorough and I left with feet still in dire need of a good pumicing.


**Note: I have noticed my page views go up dramatically when I have cutesy titles so you have only yourself to blame if you opened this post only to say, "Awww man, Budapest again?!"