At most IIHF tournaments, they give the players a day off every few days to allow them to rest and recover. Today was the first of those days. This morning we started bright and early and completed all of our testing in one shot. Everyone (myself included) always gets stressed about testing so while it was a lot to do in one morning we were all glad to get it over and done with. Once we were finished we all relaxed for a bit before catching a bus to downtown Budapest.
After arriving downtown, the group split up. Some choose to go shopping and the others choose to do a little sightseeing. I went with the sightseeing group. Fortunately we had an awesome guide who spoke Hungarian in Ramona. Ramona is from Germany but her mother is from Budapest so she knows both the language and the city. Most people don't know this but Budapest is actually split by the Danube River into two parts - Buda and Pest. We walked across the famous Chain Bridge from the Pest side to Buda. From there we walked up a huge hill to the castle district and saw the changing of the guards. Of course we took the standard tourist photos of us next to them! After watching the ceremony we walked around a bit more to a portion called the Citadella. This is a huge church and then some ornate stone walls overlooking the entire Pest side of the city. I remember this well from when Dina and I were here a few years ago but it is still just as spectacular. While we were walking around there were two guys with giant eagles that you could pay to hold. Katie and Maria decided to go for it so we all were laughing as they held these giant birds! Then Ramona took us to this beautiful outdoor cafe at the very top of the stone structures. There we had traditional Hungarian soup for lunch and listened to a 3 guys play music. I'm not sure who was enjoying it more, us or them because they certainly seemed to get a kick out of us! Lunch took a little longer than expected so we had to rush to catch the bus back to the hotel but it was a great afternoon spent away from the hockey rink.
After we got back to the hotel we found out that most of our IIHF gear had cleared customs. The supervisors were able to give us our track suits, a polo and a really nice fleece lined jacket. What makes it even better is they are actually women's sizes this year! Once we got all of our gear we had to get ready for our next little excursion. The organizing committee had arranged a bus tour of the city for us. The unique thing about this bus tour though was it actually drove into the Danube River and turned into a boat. It was kind of like the duck boats but it was definitely more of a bus than a boat. One really funny moment happened when we entered the water and they asked Simon, one of our supervisors to switch sides because we were tilted to one side. As soon as he switched the bus flattened out. I don't think he will ever live that down!
After the tour we came back to the hotel, had some dinner then went down to the sauna/hot tub for a little relaxation. Back to work tomorrow with the final preliminary round games!
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