Pretty serious stuff.
On the upside, it was a beautiful day out, and I decided to go grab a coffee somewhere near the sunshine and chill out before starting another walk. I wanted to see Parliament today.
When I started walking down Raday street (full of cafes) I had a very pleasant surprise..
My camera had dried out! The zoom was working smoothly again, and the opening and closing thing was working properly too! My camera was in better shape than it had been in since I spilt beer on it in Vancouver!!! Amazing!
I was so pleased! Now I could see the shiny tiles on this building in the picture, which was very blurry yesterday:
There were no cafe's in the sun on that street, so I continued my search...
I found a coffee shop and sat down with my latte and wrote. There were a lot of random things going through my head, plus I've had intense dreams ever since arriving so I was feeling muddled. The writing helped. Jon called and we met up at the coffee shop then headed in the general direction of Parliament. I was snapping away:
These building I wanted to take a picture of the day before and now I did:
This is near a supermarket I had been to buying bread and nutella:
I guess they were making this new building look old, or this old building look new...
Then there was some old and new beside each other, which was cool.
This building was deemed ugly on the bottom part, so I cut it off. Jon and I laughed at how if this building was in Melbourne or Vancouver people would think it's the most amazing building ever, but since it's in Europe it was only "alright from the waist up I guess".
There was a big dinosaur made of sticks which was pretty interesting:
We walked by this big church:
The statues looked nice against the sky;
It turned out to be free to enter, so we popped in to have a look. I was surprised at how much gold was inside!
It was pretty impressive, so FOX took a picture in front of it!!
There are a lot of little alleys and such in the city center. We walked through some of those, then ended up in this big square type thing... There were fancy buildings everywhere and sunshine.
Jon tried to pronounce this in Russian and some old guy seemed happy he was doing so:
This building was the only one they had apparently not cleaned. It gives it a totally different look eh?
We actually made it to Parliament! It looked nicer from the water, plus I couldn't get all of the building in one shot, so this doesn't really do it justice.
there was a tour starting in 5 minutes which was perfect, but it was very expensive. More expensive than I was expecting. You had to go to a guard, walk to a door and buy your tickets one at a time. We asked how much it was and opted for walking around the outside of the building instead. It was such a nice day too it was good to be outdoors. We started wandering again:
We ended up at the water, looking at the view. I decided to go towards the lion bridge and get a proper non-blurry lion photo
Here is the view from the bridge!
While we were up there it was decided that it was food time. Neither of us knew where the cafes were on the Buda side, so we went back to the Pest side and started a hunt for outdoor seating. We found this, which I had seen yesterday and also wanted a photo of. We went in a few hippie stores but I didn't buy anything.
There were a few places near these painted thingys, so we sat down and had a late lunch/early dinner in the sun with a glass of wine each. It was relaxing.
Speaking of relaxing, I had been wearing my bathing suit under my clothes since I planned on going to the baths later. I was thinking to do this after dinner now. Jon was going to meet up with Lisa, but that didn't work out so he decided to come with me for bathing.
I wanted to pick up a book first at a hostel named Mandala hostel since I had seen on Bookcrossing.com that there were a couple books hidden there that looked interesting. We went to Jon's hostel first to pick up swimming trunks. We passed this funny small car on the way. I love Europe for that:
This was a huge place all painted in bright colourful stripes with a huge amount of rooms and a bar etc. The guys working were nice, and showed us where this other hostel was. It was right down the street and easy to find. This place was the opposite of the loud bright nutty hostel. This place was very peaceful. It was like a converted apartment space so it was cozy and reminded me of the Cinema a little bit. The guy that ran the place was awesome, you know when you meet calm grounded young people they must be doing something right. I was really surprised how strongly I could feel the calmness in that place - it was cool.
Now that I think about it, Budapest seems to have some sort of strong energy thing going on. I am getting really intense dreams every single night, I was freaked in the caves more than normal, and now this place I could feel the space too. Weird.
We left the hostel and made our way to the metro to go up to the big baths. The metro line was supposed to be one of the oldest undergrounds in Europe, and it looked it. It wasn't dirty, it just had wood paneling and stuff on the platform.
"Opera" was the station we entered at, so here is what I assume is the Opera house
I found the building across the street to be interesting as well:
We got out at Hero's Square which was actually quite big!
This was supposed to include the pillar but it's really hard to aim. I'm just happy all of our heads are in the shot:
It was just getting dark as we made it to the baths. They were open until ten so it was no big hurry:
Now here it was very very nice. I put my camera in a locker so there are no photos of the inside, but if you want to see photos of the place you can look on google here
There was seemingly endless entertainment there. There were bubbles, a whirlpool, more bubbles, waterfalls, etc in a big outdoor pool. We ended up splashing around in there for aaaaages. Eventually we went looking for a sauna and found three saunas and tons of thermal sulfur pools. There were different temperatures and different levels of sulfur in all of them. I was not expecting it to be so huge. We tried the hot sauna that smelled of chamomile, then baths (with showers before/after sauna of course), then sauna, then baths... you get the idea. Eventually the place closed so we were there for almost 4 hours! I was such a prune.
I felt almost drugged when I left. It was past ten so Octogon was one of the few places left that had food places open. I ordered a huge burrito full of beans, rice, veggies, beef, and such. I couldn't even finish it but I felt healthy. I had called Adam and found out that the toxic sludge had reached the Danube, so I was asked to bring a bunch of water bottles home too. I stopped by a grocery store and hopped on the tram home! Jon's hostel was a couple stops earlier than mine, so we said goodbye there before sleeping a tonnnn.
That bath really had me relaxed since I fell asleep before 3 I think. I still woke up at 11 though. I was refreshed and feeling good. Adam was going to the countryside to visit friends so I went out to meet Lisa and Jon for vegan breakfast. We met up at the market and walked to a Hari Krishna place. I wasn't super happy with my soups but their food looked decent. I was still full though.
Jon had to go meet up with his new host, and I had all my stuff with me because I was switching hosts myself, so Lisa and I took my hoop to a nice park on an island and I hooped and hung out for the afternoon. On the way back we bought snacks and beer (she had a smoothie) and sat by the church drinking our beverages. We then went over a bridge and I was finally able to get some good night shots!
this is the bridge I was on:
We found a nice spot near this hotel to chill for a little while until I was due back to meet Benny to go into the house.
I walked across town in 20 minutes or something and succeeded at arriving on time!
I was happy with myself. I settled in for about an hour and caught up with Benny before I was out the door again. There was an event at the university where they light up a whole side of an old soviet style building and every window is a pixel. They put up designs every year to music, but this year was the first they were going to do in colour! Benny had to sleep and study for an interview so he gave me keys and his old tram pass and I went to meet up with Lisa at the Uni to watch the show.
It was freezing and late, but it was worth it I think...
They started with clips from 2007, then 2009, then 2010 in colour. It looked a lot better than the other years, really impressive how much things improved in only one year. They talked a lot in between clips though, so eventually Lisa and I were so cold that we left for the end. A lot of others were leaving at the same time anyway, so it must have been close to over.
I have some videos of them, but they need to be uploaded and that takes forever. I'll do it later.
After the dot matrix we went out to this free club called Instant. It was two floors and a cellar, really big and busy. The music was sometimes good sometimes not good, so we danced for a while until Lisa grew tired and I was wanting different music. We actually took off at a decent time, totally sober and I was feeling quite proud of myself :)
There was a giant owl with breasts hanging from the bar, so I took a photo:
I walked back home and Lisa hopped on transit to get to her home, and I called it a night.
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