pour améliorer: Castles and Baths

Our first morning (but second day) in Budapest dawned, and we made our way down to breakfast. And with a gasp, I realised that the breakfast room was possibly even more beautiful than the other room I’d been taking photos of the previous day after our arrival. Unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough to get photos of it before they piled all of the tables and chairs on top of each other for cleaning, so here’s a little sneak peak of the best chairs.

OK. I promise that’s the last time I rave about the furniture in our hotel (at least that particularly hotel - I make no promises for future spectacular hotels). Onto walking the streets of Budapest!

We made sure we walked past the ‘House of Terror’, which documents Hungary's 20th century experience of fascist and communist regimes, and served as a place for interrogation, torture and execution under those regimes. We decided that we didn’t have the time (or mental energy) to explore it during our very short stay in Hungary, so we moved on.

In fact, we moved down, into the little underground train system. They’re lovely little antique stations, with decorated steel columns, true subway tiles (that I’ve only really seen in photos of US bathrooms and kitchens), and painted ceramic tile station names.

We hopped out at Heroes Square, where there is a museum (that we admired from afar), and the Millenium Monument which contains statues of significant people in Hungary’s history.

We moved on from it toward Vajdahunyad Castle, and had to stop to try to process what we were seeing.

None of the signs explaining this were in English, but we deduced that this was some kind of large scale art project.

I enjoyed this section.

And thought this portaloo was pretty hilarious.

The castle that you saw in the background of those shots is pretty amazing,

The second I saw this guy I almost yelled out ‘Dementor!!!’ In fact I think I did at least grab Tom’s arm and say it at a normal pitch.

As it turns out, it is actually a statue of a monk who is credited to have written the first book recording the history of the Hungarians, but very little is actually known about him. Including his name. So, it would seem that Harry Potter is safe for the moment.

This nearby building that looks like a church is actually a restaurant that also calls itself Anonymous.

This lion really enjoyed a little scratch.

And then we reached Budapest’s oldest (and apparently cheapest) bathhouse.

And we peered through the window in the foyer and admired it.

We spent a long time in the foyer trying to talk ourselves into paying the 19 euro per person to go inside, since one of our primary reasons for visiting Budapest in the first place was to experience these baths (not just peer at them through the window). We just really didn't feel like it! So, we considered the fact that we would only be able to stay for an hour or two in order to still be able to see a few more things before we had to leave that evening, and therefore wouldn’t get much value for money. We considered the fact that it was a bit of a cool, gloomy day, so it wasn't really the type of day that you felt like spending wandering around in your swimmers.

Really, we were just making excuses for the fact that we just weren’t that into it, as lovely as the building was.

What eventually decided it? Tom started talking about how nasty things in the water can’t really survive in cold water, but in warm water (like the thermal water in these baths), they thrive and breed. That was it. No baths for us. Not that I’m saying that these baths are hotbeds for nasty bacteria or anything, I just couldn’t hack the thought that they might be, and as said, we were kind of looking for a good excuse not to use them anyway.