When in Hungary, go to the bath houses. That's exactly what we did. We figured our poor battered bodies deserved a nice rest, so instead of doing an intensive day of site seeing and walking, we decided to devote the day to the baths.
We made a silly mistake and we forgot towels! Most of the baths were inside however so we ended up being ok without them. Architecturally, the Szchenyi bath house was insanely impressive. The building was really old and had high vaulted ceiling, giving it a feeling of grandeur. There were so many rooms we didn't even end up exploring them all! Each one had an ultra relaxed feel with a large bath or multiple small baths taking up the whole room.
When you first enter the baths, there is a locker room where you change and drop your stuff. You cannot actually be nude inside so everyone must wear a bathing suit. The first room is probably the most impressive of the indoor rooms. Huge old columns separate the room into three parts with three baths. The middle takes up most of the room, making it the largest indoor bath we saw. We soaked here for a while however it consisted mostly of elderly people that seemed to have parked it there for the day, so after a while we decided to explore on. The baths in this room especially were strangely pressurized so you could literally submerge your hand in water and have it suspended there without using any effort. I know that's sort of what water does anyway but it was unlike anything we've ever experienced. You could even feel it in your chest, like someone was pressing in from all sides.
While the baths were crazy cool, they were all also relatively the same. They varied in temperature, shape and size, but it was the rooms that made you want to hop from one to the next. Each room gave the bath a totally different feel. There was one room that was more industrially lit and more made for actual swimming. One had high vaulted white ceilings. With the sun shining through, it almost had a Greek god-like feel. I imagined it would be the place that the gods would have hung out in Greek myths on Mt. Olympus.
We did venture outside even though it was a bit nippy. Compared to everywhere else we've been recently, it's really been quite nice. The sun actually makes it warm! There were many more families in the outdoor baths. Lots of young children were splashing around and playing water games. Along the edges you still had the bothers that were just there to soak and the water was really warm. The building surrounds the pool 360 degrees. The yellow walls with white columns in the sun gives it a vibrant full-of-life feel. Unfortunately we didn't being our cameras into the baths for fear of destroying them in the water but here's a pretty good picture of the outside, which is actually the point of view where we sat!
https://www.google.hu/search?q=szechenyi+baths&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari&redir_esc=&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=2U-CUJ_9LsfgtQaIw4HoDQ&biw=768&bih=928&sei=3E-CUOWbIIzFtAbJ2YHQBw#biv=i|0;d|eebNiWszD8bRmM:
Another lovely treat was the fact that there were multiple saunas. I believe each one was meant to target some health condition or another as the entrance to the saunas had a sign describing each of the different ones (they were distinguishable by the color of the light inside). The only one we could recognize for sure was the aroma therapy one but all of the others were in Hungarian so we couldn't read them. We tried them all anyway!
We spent the day hopping from one bath to the other, punctuated by 10 minute sauna trips. For the weary traveler it was the perfect day to rejuvenate and heal the aching joints.
We tried to do the steam bath as well but if you've never experienced one,its the closest thing to being baked in an oven that I can imagine. It literally feels like your lungs and inner nostrils and being cooked when you try to breath in. I found it very unpleasant and we lasted for about 2 minutes.
But everything else about the day was lovely and we left feeling like jello. And definitely more relaxed than we've been in the past month and a half! We apologize for having no pictures but like I said we didn't have water proof cameras. There will be more pictures of Budapest to come though so have no worries!
Cheers,
Liz
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