As I got to our first site today, I realized I left my camera battery in the charger at the hotel, so all these pictures are from my phone.
First up, we managed to make it to the Parliament building which was open today (!) for a 10am tour...in "English". I put that in quotes, because if the guide was speaking English, I could barely understand her!
Here's a miniature of the Parliament building. Does it look familiar? It was built from 1885-1902 (like most things) to celebrate the Hungarian millennium year of 1896. It was inspired by its counterpart in London, where the architect studied! The dome once had a huge, red communist star stuck to its tallest spire.
The entry way, resplendent in gold and velvet.
This is the Hungarian crown, which is placed directly under the big dome. (See the picture below). The crown is guarded by two armed guards, and surrounded by statues of Hungary's great kings. There are copies of this crown all over Budapest. This is supposedly the original, which Pope Sylvester II sent to Hungary to crown Istvan on Christmas Day in the year 1000. Since then, the crown has has a checkered history, being lost, stolen, hidden, found, and all number of things that we normally do to our car keys. The cross on the top was apparently bent in all this shuffling around. The USA actually kept it safe at Fort Knox between the end of WWII and 1978, when Jimmy Carter returned it.
Some of the statues of Hungary's kings.
I tried to take a panorama of all the statues!
This is where Parliament holds sessions. We were lucky to get a peek!
Just outside of the session room, along the window sills, are these gold trays. Each space has a number on it, and they're a little bigger than a thumb. Can you guess what they're for? They're cigar holders! Because members of Parliament couldn't smoke in the ultra fine room you just saw, they would leave their burning cigars on these little trays, and make note of which number they parked it at. If someone was giving a particularly good speech, the cigar in the holder would burn down. So they started calling particularly good speeches "Havanas"!
Next up was walking tour of Heroes' Square and City Park! Heroes' Square is a who's who of Hungarian history, built, like most other major things, for the millennial anniversary of Hungary. That center column there is surrounded by Magyars, the asian descendants of all Hungarians. Each one represents one of the seven Magyar tribes. Arpad is in the center, the great-great-great grand father of Istvan, the first Christian king of Hungary. At the top, the archangel Gabriel holds out the Hungarian crown for Istvan. The back colonnades have statues of major Hungarian figures.
Behind Heroes' Square is the entrance to City Park, basically the Central Park of Budapest. There was ice skating going on! The Szecheny Baths are in this park, which is the place to go in the summer for it's spectacular outdoor pool.
This is Vajdahunyad Castle, a replica of a Transylvanian castle that was built for the Millennial National Exhibition and meant to be torn down. But locals loved it so much they rebuilt it in permanent materials. It's absurdly adorable and picturesque.
This is a monument to Anonymous, specifically, the Anonymous from the court of Bela IV who penned the first Hungarian history in the Middle Ages.
Hello, George Washington! This statue was funded by Central European immigrants to the US.
Look at this huge leaf! It's so large! I couldn't believe how enormous this leaf was!
It did make quite a fine hat, though.
Follow the white rabbit...
We then journeyed to the Great Market Hall, which was so fun! The main floor is all kinds of produce and meat and dairy and wine and etc etc etc. I bought a Turo Rudi, a semi-sweet mascarpone-ish cheese covered in chocolate. Apparently Hungarian mothers bribe their children with it to get them to behave which they're at the market. It was so tasty, I certainly would have shut up to get one!
They had many many cases like this of mushrooms, each labeled in latin and Hungarian with a picture to let you know if it was edible or poisonous.
The basement has pickled foods and a big fish market. It made me super sad to see all these live fish crammed into tanks, so I didn't take any pictures of their misery.
Outside of the Great Market Hall, I gave Mike directions back to the hotel and took myself across the green Liberty Bridge on a tram to go for a little R&R at the Gellert Baths!
"Bad" swimming pool? I don't think so!
I couldn't take pictures inside for obvious reasons, but this is a photo of a photo that was on the wall. The thermal baths are set up symmetrically, with women's and men's separated from each other, and a communal regular swimming pool in the center.
It was a labyrinth maze in the locker rooms, where there are halls and halls of changing lockers and hallways that lead to all kinds of places. When I bought my ticket I was issues a plastic wrist band that I held up to a scanner to get through a turnstile. You also use it to open and lock individual lockers. It was pretty cool! After renting a towel and suit and finally navigating my way around the maze, I came into the thermal bath room. Where I ended up staying....for three hours. IT WAS DIVINE. The picture above is a little glimpse of the baths. On the left side, the shallow pool is filled with warm mineral-y water at 36C, or 98.6F, and the other side was 38C, or 100.4, perfectly flanking the body's natural temperatures. Right next to these twin baths was a sauna, a steam room (which had me melting it was so wonderful) and a cold plunge pool, at 18C (64F) which, yes, I did plunge in to several times! It made my skin feel like cold cut crystal. I alternated a few times, then basically fell asleep floating in perfectly decadent water, surrounded by lounging Hungarians. It was probably the highlight of Budapest for me!
It was dark when I left!
I stopped by the Christmas market one last time, and there was this cute little brass band parading around.
This is hot cherry cider!
This man was playing the electric guitar with a mini amp and was killing it! He was so phenomenal.
After I reunited with Mike at the hotel we went out to a wonderful restaurant with the most delightful owner who talked to us for a long time. I ended up getting duck sausage!
And then I poured my uber relaxed mushy body into bed and slept and slept and slept....one last time in Budapest.
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