Ballet and baths in Budapest
Trip Start
Jan 04, 2005
1
16
35
Trip End
Aug 22, 2005
Budapest,
Hungary
Saturday, March 12, 2005
So there's been a slight change of plans as you can see from the map.....we said ciao ciao to Italy, and decided to head north to Eastern Europe. Seems like an odd decision p seeing as we were already cold in Venice, but we found out some of our Scandinavian friends wouldn't be around when we were planning on being there so....bring on the snow and cold. woo!
Budapest has been a great place to start off the Eastern European leg of our trip. We've had an amazing time at our hostel, met some cool people, and spent some quality time on their couches, enjoying their free DVDs.
We did get out and see the sights though first, I swear =) Thursday we headed into Pest and saw St. Stephen's Basilica, Heroes Square, and the Opera House. There, we decided to check out the box office to see if we could score some of the cheap tickets we had heard about. 10 mins later we left with 2 tickets for the ballet, all for the bargain price of about 10 euros.We were a little worried about our casual dress as we saw nothing but women in fur coats entering the Opera house. No need to worry though, as there was a side entrance for people like us. The ballet was called Mayerling, and was internse to say the least. Apparently the Hungarians really enjoy the use of "dramatic" props, like revolvers and skulls. There was no falling asleep with the constant gun fire, that's for sure.
And who would have thought that Hungary would be the first country where we'd have the opportunity to slap on our swimsuits. Yesterday we took a trip to one of Budapest baths' called Gellert, and spent 2 hrs frolicking with the (often nude) Hungarian ladies, in 38 degree Celsius water.
We've done our best to sample the Hungarian cuisine. We found a market that had a bunch of stalls so we were able to pick and choose the ones we wanted, rather than attempt to make sense of words like rantott sajt (fried cheese) langos (deep fried dough). The langos did not let us down(as if something deep fried could be anything but delish).
Today we've checked out the Buda side of the city, and saw the Buda royal palace and St. Matthias church. Tonight we head to Prague via bus so we'll talk to you from there!
Bye!
