So I've decided to stay in Budapest for a day more. I give Roman a text to say I'm staying and he texts me back asking “would I like to come in the bath with him”. Naturally I say yes. Our goal is to find the thermal baths I have heard so much about and been recommended by other travellers to the city. An interesting tram journey takes us on a rather scenic route and then quite a bit of a walk later we find the place. The price seems quite steep at 2700HUF (£9) but we pays our monies and in we go. Determined ladies dressed in white uniforms hover around and make sure we don't stray into the women's changing rooms. We find the men's and battle with the electronic locker which requires a special watch to lock it. It has some newfangled code that you have in the watch that activates the lock on your locker. Getting the angle right to make it work whilst attached to your wrist is entertainment in itself. When we eventually find the entrance to the main bathing area I am surprised it is outdoors. It's just starting to get a bit dark and the air temperature is about 22 degrees. The water temperature is about 38 and as you descend the steps your body becomes wrapped in a blanket of cosy warmness and immediately you enter a state of relaxed stupor. The thought of swimming is ridiculous although it is probably possible. Heads bob around in the night air whilst the rest of the body is submerged in the cosy luxury of the thermal waters. When the sky turns fully dark it really is a special place to be, with the stars as your ceiling. We laze around in here for a while laughing at the various pursuits people are getting up to in the baths. Girls are giggling, lads are chatting, a couple of men are playing waterproof chess and another is trying to read a book without getting it wet. We venture into the depths of the building to find out what other delights it has in store. On the way we stop at the bar where the barmen assures us we can take our drinks into the Sauna. Drinks in hand we go look for the hot room and get some rather strange looks as we enter with our beers, needless to say nobody else has one. The sauna is ridiculously hot and the towel I brought with me is approximately 12” square and I've left it in the locker anyway. It's too hot for me to sit down for very long because it's burning my legs. We leave the sauna and investigate various other rooms with varying hotness and smells. Dark saunas, smelly saunas, big ones, small ones, Turkish baths and plunge pools all containing different minerals that stimulate the senses as you pop in and out on your merry little tour of this establishment. Roman and I come to the overriding conclusion that most of the smells are not very nice (no matter how good they are for you) and go back to the main bathing area. We then find another pool of the same size with various bubble making devices and jets of water pointing at you from all sorts of interesting angles but it's colder than the other pool, so we go back to the hot stupefying area and melt for a while.
The night is young when you don't live in a tent in a field and so we go meet Kitty in a bar where her friends are having a birthday celebration. Hungarian beers, Hungarian schnapps, Hungarian pizza and a complete and utter failure of grasping the Hungarian language make for a good night and so it is on to the next establishment where I am kindly reminded by random Hungarians that spinning of the players in table football is not allowed. These lot actually play it skilfully. Blimey! The rest of the night is probably completely fabricated by the other two but apparently I demanded a swig of a less than glamorous ladies wine (who may well live ) on the tram on the way home, and we fell asleep on each others shoulders. Lies I tell you.
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