Starting of the day we headed back to the Parliament Building for a tour. Our tour ended took us to see the grand plaza staircase, Crown Jewels and to see the Dom. The parliament building took over 19 years for it to build and trust me everyday was worth it! The inside is even more stunning yah the exterior. The ceilings are framed with gold and have depictions all throughout. The wallpaper is so intricate, I have a hard time believing that wasn’t stencilled and all hand painted. When we went to view the Dom the chandelier apparently 30 meters lower than the actual height of the building from the outside. All the jewels on the chandelier weigh four tones and directly below it are the Crown Jewels. Not the best place to have them displayed in my opinion and sadly photos were not permitted! The your was way too short for the price we paid in my opinion, but I suppose they need to charge so much to keep everyone working there employed. There was an obscene amount of guards around. There was four of them standing around the Crown Jewels and also one at with end of our tour group making sure that did not stray from the guide.
After the tour we started to make our way to opposite side of Budapest to the Széchenyi Baths but not before making two stops along the way! The first stop was too look through the 1956, a memorial site and exhibition. As we have been walking along the city we have noticed many different unique memorials around the city to tribute to this, so it was interesting to acquire more information about it.
We then walked across the city and left the tourist area and were able to see the Budapest to a resident. Overall Budapest is a rather relaxed city, it doesn’t have the hustle and overcrowding like Prague and yet this area was as if there was no one there. Just a few family owned stores and a cafe were it appeared the daily customers were socializing with one another. Our second stop of the way to the baths was to the Hero’s Square.
Finally just a few blocks away we decided that we should grab a bite to eat before we went inside the baths. So we grabbed a bite and ate it along the pond in the river. After we were fuelled up away we went. The Széchenyi Baths had over 26 different baths, both inside and outside. There were also saunas, but after already being in the mid 30 degree heat voluntarily stepping to 55 degree temperatures did not sound enticing to me. Each bath ranged in temperatures from 10-35 degree temperature water. The also differentiated by steam and thermal. I am sure that they had different minerals and additives to them as well but sadly nothing was labelled and if it was it was only in Hungarian Huff! Once the sun began to set and our whole bodies were pruned from the many hours we spent in water we headed off to grab some dinner. We went to a restaurant called Hummus, can your guess that we hummus? I also had the best homemade lemonade and falafels! What made it even better was how cheap it was. For both Andreas and i’s meals, drink and appetizer it came less to $12 cdn! After filling ourselves up we took our doggie back bag to our hostel and crashed instantaneously! I suppose we had too much fun in the sun!