Chapter 9: Baths With Strangers

Three-quarters of the country of Hungary sits atop of a giant reservoir of hot springs, and Budapest is known as the spa capital of the world. On a cool rainy day, we went to Széchenyi Baths, the most famous of the dozen naturally-fed baths in the city.

Széchenyi is a huge complex with 15 indoor pools, but the main attractions are the three large outdoor pools fed by 165° F underground hot springs, mixed with cooler water to become a balmy 100° F.

It was a quiet weekday morning, meaning our fellow bathers were circa 40-100 years older than us, but that didn’t deter them from flaunting swimsuits you couldn’t show on the Disney Channel.

After staying a week by the Budapest Parliament building, we moved downtown. Our AirBnb overlooked the courtyard of St. Stephen’s Basilica, named for the first King of Hungary and housing his desiccated right hand. Its 315 feet is exactly the same height as Parliament, symbolizing that worldly and spiritual thinking have the same importance.

You can climb to the top of the center dome (for a small donation, natch), and look out on the city.

As always, we took the opportunity to peek inside.

Somewhere off to the right of that picture, St. Stephen’s actual right hand lies in a darkened box with a viewing window and a coin slot. Dropping in the small fee will ostensibly light the box for a short time, although the bulb was burnt out and my money disappointingly unreturned. Oh well. That hand is over 1,000 years old so at this point it probably just looks like a racoon paw.

Later that evening, we went to the Black Swan and ordered two extraordinarily expensive specialty cocktails.

Mine, on the left, was a tequila concoction draped in a huge bubble which burst delightfully on the first sip, releasing a plume of aromatic cedar smoke. Rachel’s was a Manhattan-like drink served in a glass crafted to balance on top of a fake wooden log, next to a mushroom set aflame by the bartender to create a peaty aroma.

The young lady next to me saw my drink and ordered the same, then spent five minutes burrowed in her phone trying to find the perfect Instagram filter for such a lovely scene. When she finally looked up, the bubble had burst unobserved, and her face fell.

Across the Danube, on the Buda side of the city, sits Matthias Church and Fisherman’s Bastion, a 140-meter long fortification with seven high-pitched stone towers providing a panoramic lookout of the city.

Matthias Church sits a few yards back from the walls.

We snapped our pictures, took the ferry back across the river, and just like that our second week in Budapest came to a close. And we were on to Croatia.