PRAHA! (but Buda Baths first)

I am currently in Prague, and it is (of course) awesome. We haven't done much as we just arrived today, but let me give you the low-down the the Turkish baths from our last day in Budapest.

First of all, Budapest is way too big and there's too much stuff to do in the short 3 nights we were there. However, per Reka's (a friend from the j-school who's from Hungary) recommendation, we visited Gellert spa, a Turkish bath. It was AMAZING!

We arrived and bought our day passes, and headed to the changing room to put on our bathing suits. The locker attendant lady asked us if we wanted to have massages before going to the baths, so we figured why not and coughed over the 2500 HUF (10 Euro, 12 U.S. dollars) for a 15-min full body massage.

We entered this massage parlor and the masseuse took each of us back to separate rooms. The rooms looked a little like a shabby hospital room with a curtain dividing two beds (both which were occupied). The masseuse then pointed for me to take off my swimsuit top, and then my bottoms. This freaked me out a bit and was incredibly awkward, but I did it anyway because I was in Hungary and well, why not? When Megan and I were reunited after massages, she told me that when she entered the room and saw a naked chick in the next bed she wondered what kind of massage she was getting. Little did she (and we) know that we would soon be in the same position!

I had an incredible massage, and then Megan and I headed up to the sunbathing terrace to try and catch some much needed rays. About 45 min into our pool visit, the pool turned into a massive wave pool with gigantic waves crashing into us, knocking us over. It's more intense than the beaches I've recently visited, and it was definitely the strongest wave pool I've ever been in. We flopped around like fish in the waves and kept talking about how we felt like kids again. It was great.

After peak sun time was over, we went to the Turkish baths. The first was 38 degrees C (106 F) and the second was 36 C. To be honest, they were pretty gross. The water was murky and the entire time I kept thinking about how disgusted I was (thanks mom for making me afraid of hot tubs). I did it anyway because I had to experience it... then I went under the waterfall that was steaming hot water and it felt great. I stopped caring about the dingy water at that point.

After the baths, we checked out the steam room. At first Megan and I thought we found the steam room and were terrified by the intense heat we felt... then someone opened the door to the real steam room and we realized we were only in the corridor! Stupid us. So, we went in for probably 2 minutes before running out gasping for air. It felt like we were breathing fire. We then dove into the chill pool (8 degrees C, 46 F) and it felt amazing. After that we went back into the steam room and sat for quite some time. The steam was so intense that you could not see across the room and had to use your hands to find the exit. After a while, we started to rub our arms, legs and face and the grossness from our pores came spewing out. After about 5 minutes of the intense heat (we're guessing 150 degrees F) we jumped back into the chill pool and it was the most incredible feeling ever.

Since then, my skin has felt amazing and I swear the spas are the best thing ever!!!

We passed out on lawn chairs for a bit after the steam room. It really took it out of us. We we awoke we felt rejuvenated enough to visit statue park, where we saw statues from the communist era. At first, we took lots of pictures, and then we got creative and posed with the statues to liven up the photos. We were a bit bored because the descriptions weren't in English so we really didn't understand what we were seeing. Our knowledge of communist history pretty much sucks, so we had do to something to entertain us. (we only knew Stalin and Lenin.)