buda vs. pest - round 2

indoor market. the first floor was fruit and vegetable venders, butchers, and bakers, mostly. the second floor had shops and hungarian fast food places. i think the building used to be a train station or something.

ok, so day 2 now. the first thing we did was go to a thermal bath. it was super relaxing, despite the fact that most of the patrons were large old naked hungarian men (the courtesy loincloth wasn't very effective for many of them). of course the mens and womens baths are separate. and as you might expect, i heard the womens side was an equally graphic sight. who would have thought the one place i felt a little overdressed was when i was wearing nothing but a typical swimming suit. we quickly adjusted, though, and i actually sprung for a massage (about $12). i had to be nude laying face down while some large pot bellied hungarian man performed the massage. and what can i say, he was wonderful. after the baths, we went to an indoor market to look at a few shops and get some "hungarian fast food." well most of our group decided on burger king across the street, but another guy and i actually ate there, and it was better than it looked. the lady from the train was right, good, but spicy. later that afternoon, we headed to the buda side to see mathias church, followed by a visit to the hungarian house of wines. a friend who had been to budapest a few weeks ago told us about this place. for about $17 you get a tasting glass and "two hours" in their cellar, which has displays of every wine producing region in hungary, and you can sample as much as you want. needless to say, it was well worth the money. especially because all but one of us stayed for about 3 hrs. aaron, unfortunately made the mistake of asking one of the men working to open another bottle of wine he wanted to taste. then the man countered with a polite request for aaron to leave because he had been there for longer than 2 hrs. no matter, we were all making great conversation with all sorts of random people. once we left there, i lost the rest of my group so i spent the remainder of the evening with 2 guys who graduated from harvard last year and a mother and daughter from england. strange. but i made it back to my hostel eventually, even though it took twice as long as it should have.



hungarian house of wines. from left: adam, aaron, will, clint, veronica, and savannah.



bridge over the danube. on the left you can see the building that housed the thermal baths we went to, gellert spa. on the right you can see the citadel which is a huge statue on a huge hill that is super high above the city. quite breathtaking from up there.