Bath Time

Budapest, Hungary

The day I have looked forward to all year has finally arrived! Hungarian thermal bath day! Also, it is Christmas Eve.

Budapest - also called the “City of Baths” - was settled by the Romans as a frontier city protecting the borders of the empire. The Romans quickly discovered the more than 120 thermal springs in the area and built baths - a tradition that has continued well into the 21st century.

Short on time, as this is our last full day in Budapest, we adopted a “go big or go home” approach to thermal bathing and booked a resversation with Széchenyi Baths - the largest of the thermal baths in Budapest. Built in 1913, Széchenyi Baths features 15 indoor and 3 outdoor pools - all of which I tired - in a giant yellow palace. There are also numerous saunas and steamrooms with varying temperatures throughout the complex.

The water from the thermal baths is high in hydrogen carbonate, calcium and magnesium and the baths range in temperatures from cold as heck to 100 degrees.

The baths run year-round, rain or shine, and we got the experience the rain part first hand this morning. Despite the freezing cold drizzle, we stayed pretty warm in the large outdoor pool. The rain wasn’t keeping anyone else away either and by noon the facilites were so crowded it was difficult to find a place to stand.

Other than the main outdoor pool, my favorite activity was one of the steamrooms with infrated showers. Inside the steamroom, the walls had a relaxing bubbly water window and some kind of seeds roasting over the heat - which smelled great.

After the baths, we didn’t have a whole lot of options as most everything was closed or closing because of the holiday. We were able to make a stop at Heroes Square, however. Heroes Square is an important public square - often host to political demonstrations - the square features huge statues depicting Hungarian leaders and founders like the seven Magyar Chieftains who were the original tribal leaders of Hungary.

By the time we made our way back to the hotel (catching the last bus available) everything was officially closed. We couldn’t even find anywhere for lunch and had to settle on what we could scavenge at a tiny, closet-sized, beer/wine convenice shop. Chips and nuts it is, then!

Luckily, we had a Christmas Eve dinner reservations at a restaurant near our hotel - 21 Hungarian Resturant. It was a small establishment with a small menu of traditional Hungarian cusine served with a modern flare.

We had a goulash soup and house-made bread with duck fat butter for a starter then Josh had roasted duck and I had lamb for our entree. For dessert ,we shared a giant piece of chocolate cake.

One of my to dos for Hungary was to try Palinka, a uniquely hungarian fruit flavored liquor. Technically, Palinka is a fruit flavored brandy first developed in the Middle Ages, which can only be made and distributed from locations inside Hungary and a handful of places in Austria.

What I expected was a smooth, sweet shot that went down like candy. What Palinka actually tasted like was clear, fruit scented gasoline. It burned like moonshine and took an entire meal for me to bregrudgingly sip through 4 ounces (with Josh’s help). Palinka is not for the novice drinker!

After dinner, we took one more freezing Cold walk around the Fisher Man’s Bastion (an iconic lookout point near our hotel). Tomorrow, we will be leaving early and headed toward our next destination - Krakow, Poland. Merry Christmas!