Budapest- Day 2

Another great day in Budapest. I started the day off by walking back to the castle, and going to the Buda Castle Labyrinth (like I said before, one of the 7 underground wonders of the world). According to the brochure, it's been used since prehistoric times as a a wine cellar, torture chamber, jail, and treasury, etc. I got there right when it opened so they hadn't turned most of the lights on (what few there were) yet. Basically they just told me good luck and sent me in to the caves... It was insane, I was lost in like 5 minutes. I was the only person in there and I couldn't see anything, it was super creepy and super cool. In some places there was scary music playing, and I could tell that a lot of figures and stuff were all around, but I couldn't see them. I resorted to my tried and true method of taking pictures with my camera to be able to see what was in front of me, and many times I was pretty scared by what I saw. They have it set up with all these stone figures and stuff, it was craaaaazy. It wasn't necessarily supposed to be scary, but with no lights and being in caves it just happened... To add to the scariness, there was a guy going around opening the place up, so he kept popping out which was scary, and he made things way more confusing because as I was going through he kept opening up new areas, making it very difficult for me to figure out where I was. It was pretty awesome. Here's a video of pretty much the only place with enough light to film. I can't listen to the sound where I am but hopefully it was one with scary music...

Here's a taste of some of the things that I could only see when I took a flash picture of them. Imagine how scary that was when I had no idea these things were right in front of me!

One of the sections of the labyrinth was an exhibition that was based on what a future exhibition about today might look like. So like there was a "fossil" of a shoe print, and a room with all these different every day objects like a toilet and stuff, all explained in ways that we explain artifacts from millions of years ago. The information pamphlet said it's an exhibition on "Homo consumes", but that very little is known about them. It said stuff like Homo consumes couldn't possibly be descended from Homo sapiens because Homo consumes only required a fraction of the brain capacity of Homo sapiens. It was really funny.

Shoe print "fossil":

"Ancient" toilet

After that I wandered back down from castle hill to the dock where my free boat tour left from. I had about 45 minutes til the next trip so I went shopping for a bathing suit so I could go to a world famous Budapest spa. Everything is really cheap here so I got a good deal on one.

The boat ride on the Danube was very nice. It gave me a cool view of the city and some information along with it. The weather wasn't quite as warm as it was yesterday, but it was still very pleasant going for a boat ride.

Parliament from the Danube:

Palace:

After the tour I headed over to the Szechenyi Baths. Budapest is really famous for the thermal springs that it's built on, and there are lots of baths because of that. I chose to go to Szechnyi because it's the largest medicinal bath in Europe, and it was the cheapest of the two big ones (the other being Gellert Bath).

Szechenyi Baths:

It was a totally new experience so it was exciting figuring out how everything worked. I had to get a "ticket", which is a wrist band, and then there was a paper ticket for using the lockers and all this other confusing stuff. The ticket I got included the outdoor pools, indoor pools, thermal baths, and saunas.

Ornate entry hall to Szechenyi Baths:

Entry wrist band:

I had to figure out how the lockers and everything worked, and once I did I headed out to the outdoor pools. It's a really cool place, as shown by the pictures below:

Outdoor pools:

I spent a few hours outside reading and getting tan, then when the sun started to get lower I headed inside. It's a really huge complex. There are a ton of different pools, each with a different purpose. I spent some time in the thermal baths, of which there are several different temperatures. Those were reeeeeally relaxing.

One of the thermal baths:

In addition to those, there were jacuzzi type things, current pools, normal indoor pools, exercise pools.... I dont even know. So many pools. I didn't do the saunas because I just thought that would be weird.

Another pool:

So that was a great afternoon. After the baths I headed back to my hostel for a shower, then wandered around the city looking for dinner. By the time I had finished dinner, I still had about an hour before I had to go to St. Stephen's Basilica for the concert, so I just sat by the Danube watching the sun set. It was a very enjoyable way to spend an hour.

My view from the riverbank:

Next was the concert. It was incredible, totally worth the money. There was an organist, who is apparently a really famous guy, then a violinist, trumpeter, guy singer, and girl singer, all who are apparently famous too. The organist played each song, and was accompanied by the other people at different times. So like each person had a solo with the organ, then they all mixed and matched for the other songs. There were songs from Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Liszt, Schubert, and Mozart, to name a few. It was fantastic. I think my mouth was hanging open half the time from sheer awe. To see a concert like that in a cathedral like that, while thinking that I'm in Budapest is incredible. I put up some pictures of St. Stephen's in yesterday's post, but here's another.

St. Stephen's Basilica:

So yeah it was a great day. Unfortunately facebook isn't letting me upload pictures, but hopefully I'll be able to do that tomorrow night. On to Bratislava tomorrow morning!