All in all the festival was a lot of fun, after 8 days we had enough of the noise and the chemical loos...they kept them as clean as possible and god knows that is not a job I ever want to do, but the smell.
We left obouda island and the festival and headed for the centre of budapest. It is a lovely city and we got lost as usual, but actually this time our getting lost brought us a lot closer to where we wanted to be. We found ourselves on the direct road to the thermal baths. I am a total thermal bath junkie, I would love a hot_tub in my garden, as wallowing for hours in hot water is my idea of heaven.
We managed to find ourselves driving up towards the avenue of heros. Architecture in Budapest tends towards the magnificient and impressive, rather than the small and cute. The avenue of heros (if I have remembered the name properly) is a huge square with very impressive statues of local heros, we squinted at them through the car windows, admired them as one is supposed to do, but hurried past as the baths were near.
For years in London, I religiously went to the turkish and russian baths, once a week, friday evenings from about 4.30 until 9,30 (I know!..what a social whirl)...were spend in a hedonistic round of heat, massage, scrub, steam, showers and general languishing...the bath house in London was a fairly small, utilitarian, victorian place, very nice, but nothing grand.
So when we got to the entrance of the Szechenyi baths, I thought it had to be a museum or something, I was expecting something like the York hall baths, I got this http://www.szechenyibath.com/ statues, mosaics, high celiings, knock your eye out gorgeousness. It cost all of about a fiver each to go in, there were about 12 pools of different temperatures and it looks to me like it is the favourite canoodling spot for Budapestians...or there was a severe shortage of sitting spots as there were a lot of women sitting on men's laps in the baths.
our favourite pool was the outside one, this is the one that you see in all the pictures, where you baste yourself gently in 36 degree water while playing chess...in this pool there were warm fountains, so you could hang about underneath getting pummeled by the water...bliss...oh my God total bliss
sadly we had to drag ourselves out of there and head to find somewhere to stay, we headed towards the border, to Esztergom where according to our maps we could cross into slovakia. We spent the last of our florints on the campsite and some food, ready to head homeward bound in the morning.
We left obouda island and the festival and headed for the centre of budapest. It is a lovely city and we got lost as usual, but actually this time our getting lost brought us a lot closer to where we wanted to be. We found ourselves on the direct road to the thermal baths. I am a total thermal bath junkie, I would love a hot_tub in my garden, as wallowing for hours in hot water is my idea of heaven.
We managed to find ourselves driving up towards the avenue of heros. Architecture in Budapest tends towards the magnificient and impressive, rather than the small and cute. The avenue of heros (if I have remembered the name properly) is a huge square with very impressive statues of local heros, we squinted at them through the car windows, admired them as one is supposed to do, but hurried past as the baths were near.
For years in London, I religiously went to the turkish and russian baths, once a week, friday evenings from about 4.30 until 9,30 (I know!..what a social whirl)...were spend in a hedonistic round of heat, massage, scrub, steam, showers and general languishing...the bath house in London was a fairly small, utilitarian, victorian place, very nice, but nothing grand.
So when we got to the entrance of the Szechenyi baths, I thought it had to be a museum or something, I was expecting something like the York hall baths, I got this http://www.szechenyibath.com/ statues, mosaics, high celiings, knock your eye out gorgeousness. It cost all of about a fiver each to go in, there were about 12 pools of different temperatures and it looks to me like it is the favourite canoodling spot for Budapestians...or there was a severe shortage of sitting spots as there were a lot of women sitting on men's laps in the baths.
our favourite pool was the outside one, this is the one that you see in all the pictures, where you baste yourself gently in 36 degree water while playing chess...in this pool there were warm fountains, so you could hang about underneath getting pummeled by the water...bliss...oh my God total bliss
sadly we had to drag ourselves out of there and head to find somewhere to stay, we headed towards the border, to Esztergom where according to our maps we could cross into slovakia. We spent the last of our florints on the campsite and some food, ready to head homeward bound in the morning.
RSS Feed