wine time

this weekend i went to tokaj (the white wine region of hungary) with 3 french girls, 3 american guys, and a canadian.

we went to a nice winery and sat outside for a while, sampling the edes szamorodni (mmm, mm, good sweet wine) with some bits of cheese and bread.

behold!

later we hiked up the 'mountain/hill' to see what we could see from the lookout. it's not really a mountain, but it passes for one around these parts. there are two paths up the mountain: the red (hard) one and the green (easy) one. we went up the hard one (fun, fun, fun) and down the easy one - maybe the reverse of the plan i would have suggested.

THE mountain/hill (see? it's not really either, but something in between)

i didn't take any real pictures of the hard path up the mountain (not something i'm dying to remember) but here is something kind of like it. imagine it being a bit darker, a bit steeper, no leaves - but just dirt, and ten billion more trees to the right.

tokaj is the most famous wine region in hungary. they make sweet, dry, and dessert wines there...all white or rose. here are some of the great grapes... which we may or may not have sampled illegally on the way down the mountain. :D

a vineyard on the way down the mountain (the easy path)

a view from the easy path

some frenchies in a vineyard
there are two main rivers in hungary (the danube in budapest and the tisza in the eastern part of the country... where i live). here is one of them - the mighty tisza (tee-suh)

we had some wine in a wine cellar or two - kind of like this one (those barrels are the signature look of hungarian cellars...red rimmed and full of delicious wine!)

there are also restaurants in many cellars there. so you and your party can have a hollowed out cave room all to yourselves for your own private wine tasting extravaganza. i'm game!

P.S. readers: this has been the 100th post! thank you for your continued readership and commentship. if it weren't for you, i wouldn't be blogging at all. thanks for giving me a reason!