Wednesday, 2 April 2008

The Baths

Another nice day! We definitely got lucky. We headed straight for the Pest side this morning on a mission to finish off our gift shopping and return to the Buda side to relax at the bath for the afternoon.

We did a lot more walking and stopped at a cafe for breakfast. We finally found the large indoor market we had looked for yesterday. This place is massive. There are two floors. The bottom floor is chalk full of food vendors with vegetables, fruits, desserts, meats and more paprika than you can shake a stick at. Really wish we had such a thing at our finger tips.

The second floor is the touristy area where the vendors are selling gifts and Hungarian wares. I had read before our trip to be carefully in this place and that prices range from one vendor to the next. We spent sometime here and I bought a few items. We then grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed back to Buda.

There are several baths in Budapest and we were lucky one of the popular ones was close to our hostel. There was one other I would have preferred to visit, but wasn't as convenient. We went to the Gellert Bath. It was quite confusing at first (as I'd be warned in the many articles I read before hand) trying to determine what we needed to pay for and if we wanted any treatments. I was going to have a foot massage but it ended up being too confusing. We paid for just the afternoon in the baths (pool, thermal baths, etc). We paid for a tiny little cabin which was a changing room basically where we could change and leave our belongings. We first tried out the pool that was beautiful. It was surrounded by tall stone pillars/columns and at every corner and around the sides stood stood lions that pumped water into the pool. The ceiling was glass allowing the sun to shine down on you. Wow what a place! The pool wasn't as warm as I would like so I didn't stay long.

We then checked out the thermal baths and spent quite awhile here. There were two half moon shaped pools - one bath/pool was 36C and the other was 38C. So one just below body temperature and the other just above. As Rach would put it, they were 'lush'. As soon as you get it you can feel every muscle in your body relax and all tension disappears. Good for our feet we have spent so much time on! The 38C was my favorite. Next was the Turkish steam room. My God it was hot! You can feel the moisture dripping from your body and it's so hot it's hard to breathe. Quite the experience! In the same area is a very small pool maybe the size of a bath tub that is of freezing cold water. Apparently a Hungarian tradition is to dip in the cold pool after the hot. No way in hell was I trying out the tradition!

We spent the last hour soaking in another pool - not sure of the temperature but it was a bit cooler than 36C. We then showered up and dressed and were off to the Brasserie next door for supper. We had a really good meal - still loving the Hungarian food - and headed back to our hotel. The meal cost us HUF 9603.00! Haha - that's only about $60.

The Hungarian Forint (HUF) makes you feel rich when you're carrying the money as one of the photos Keith took of me will show - I'm holding a 10,000 HUF bill but it's only worth about $62. The other side of the coin, it feels like you're spending a fortune when you buy something!

Back at the hostel we finished packing up and the shuttle was there to pick us up. We headed back to the airport. Goodbye Budapest! We discussed the trip on our way to the airport and decided we had a really good trip but probably wouldn't rush back anytime soon. It was short but it was the perfect amount of time. I really enjoyed visiting another country and learning about another culture. There's really something amazing about being in a city/country where you can't understand the signs and the many discussions around you. It was also amazing to see the communist side of the city. I don't know anything about communism but you could see and feel the coldness it left on some parts of the city. What a great experience to visit.

We sat in the airport and had a few drinks and chatted away. We then waited forever in a line up to check in, I got caught with a paid of fold away pliers in my carry on (Haha - had no idea these were tucked away deep in one of the pockets - they'd been there for years and it hadn't been picked up in the Bristol airport!) and then our flight was delayed about an hour and a half. That was painful!

We eventually arrived back in England around 1am, hopped on our airport shuttle to our car and drove to our hotel. We crashed so card we didn't move until 10am the next morning.

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