Date: Saturday, June 2
Written by: Brian

Location: Budapest, Hungary, Sunday leave for Croatia

We are trying something new in the blog.  You will see the baths and the Parliament hyperlinked, that means you can click on it and it will take you to see a photo and information.  Let us know what you think.

We said au voir to Paris and ser vus (hello in Hungarian) to Budapest.

The first two days we spent touring Pest and on the third day we
actually got over to Buda.  Now I know most of you are thinking how funny
that is but actually (history lesson for the day) Budapest is actually two
cities.  Buda and Pest that are split down the middle by the Danube
river.  There are nine bridges that will take you from one side to the
other or you can take a subway under the river.

Budapest is an interesting city. It has one of the world's largest
Parliament buildings as well as the world's largest synagogue.  Communism
was the form of government until 1990 and thus you can still see
remanants in buildings, people, and décor from that period. 

What do you do in Budapest?.... I am glad you asked.  As Hungary is
part of the European Union, they have the usual shopping, restaurants, and
cafes but what people come here for are the public baths houses........ 
Yes public bath houses, let me explain.

There will be no way this blog will be able to do justice to the
thermal bath houses in Budapest, but since you have read this far I will
attempt to give you a visual if you have never been to a public bath house.

The Szechenyi thermal baths were built in 1913 and as we enter the
building we at once become confused as the only sign we under stand says
baths and cabin 2200 florins, and a list of services they offer but we
are not sure what they are.  We ask the ticket lady what we should do but
with little understanding of Hungarian we settle for two tickets for
the baths and a private cabin to change in, which cost us 4400 florins
(24 US dollars)

Once we have changed into swimming suits in our cabin, more like a
closet less like a cabin, we head off to find the baths, which is a little
confusing as there are no signs.  We accidentally stumble into a
massage room where an older Hungarian lady asks us if we would like a good massage.  We politely decline and she points us to a door for the entry
to the baths.

As we enter we see a sign that says we must shower before entry, so we
quickly get that over with and proceed to the next door which is
finally the first baths.  The baths are actually natural mineral water pools
that have different varying degrees of temperature.  They resemble
large jacuzzis or pools we would have in the states.

We tried ones that were 90 degrees and then 95 degrees.  While we
enjoyed sitting in the ancient mineral bath we were looking for something a
little warmer so we headed into the steam room which was over 125
degrees.  We only lasted about five minutes in there and had to head out
where we proceeded to cool off in the 90 degree pool.

There were around 10 different pools inside that you could try but what
we wanted to see was what the outside pools were like.  As you walk
outside there are two large pools that look like Las Vegas pools.  As we
entered the first one we knew we were going to enjoy it as the
temperature was around 90 degrees but since it was a little chilly outside it
felt great.  They pool is famous for old men playing chess pool side
which Susan and I had a chance to do.  We drew a crowd actually as the old men were waiting for the next game.
 
The other pool is the interesting one that will be difficult to
explain.  It was the normal shape of a large hotel pool but it had these
bubble spot s throughout the pool that people were standing on and getting
what I guess was a bubble massage.  We would have liked to try it but
there was no way the old lady was giving up her bubble massager to me. 
In the middle of the pool was a large ceramic middle that looked like a
large jacuzzi (surrounding the jacuzzi was another ceramic ring and
there was about a 5 foot gap between the rings) we did get a chance to sit
in there and enjoy the bubbles, though I am still confused as to the
enjoyment of them. 

What is cool is every twenty minutes they turn the bubbles off and
around the outside of the jacuzzi between the two ceramic walls the turn on
jet blowers that allow you to spin around in the circle.  It is kinda
of like a fast lazy river.  We have to admit that it was really fun.

On Saturday we went to another thermal bath after walking around the city all day. As we said the thing to do hear is go to the baths, the baths we tried were the Gellert thermal baths (click on photos).  Not much different from the first ones except it was laid out better and there were signs pointing you to the correct places.  The steam room had a mint/eucalyptus smell given off from the steam which was cool.  If you watched the locals the trick of the whole thing was to go into the cold pool (45 degrees) then go to the steam room then afterward get back into the 45 degree water. Yes we did try it a couple times actually and as cold as it sounds it feels really good.  The steam room was like a 80 Celsius which is  like 150 degrees.  IT WAS HOT ! ! ! you could not even breath on yourself as it burned when you did.

The baths were great and the view from Buda over the Danube to Pest of the Parliament is amazing.  We leave on Sunday to on our way to Croatia where we will be spending a week traveling the cost of the Mediterranean.  We know tough life....

Vis Lat (goodbye in Hungarian)

Brian 

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