Hello everyone,
It's Sarah and Jen again - time for your weekly update on crazy travel
gals. Long, long, long, long, long train ride to our next stop - Hungary. But
the Romanian countryside was very interesting with lots of horse and carts,
farmers manually stacking hay into stacks - a lost art in America. We have
seen many lost American arts including during our first day in Budapest
we saw groups of girls twirling batons as part of a street festival. We
tore ourselves away from the 8-year-old girls twirling their batons to
techno-Hungarian folk songs and spent the day sightseeing around Buda.
Budapest is actually two cities split down the middle by the Danube river
into Buda and Pest. In Buda we saw the old Castle, Fisherman's Bastions,
lots of old churches, cobblestone streets. Of course, all of these things
are on a big, giant hill - as is everything of importance that's old. We
clocked about 10.5 miles between Castle Hill and Gellert Hill - where there
was an old citadel and a monument to St. Gellert (also some baths but,
Kelli, we were never able to find them - could be the all the sweat pouring
down our faces as we climbed the nearly vertical hill). Spent today in
Pest, which fortunately did not involve any more hill-climbing but we did
get caught in a thunderstorm where we had to hide out in the leaky train
station for about an hour. After this, what could be better than to get any
wetter and go to the baths! So, we walked to the Szenchyni (sp?) baths that
were closer to our side of town. Not exactly a relaxing experience since we
always wanted to see what was in the next room and we kept popping in and
out of each pool - the complex was huge! At a minimum there were about 20
different pools at various temperatures (from 25 to 40 degrees Celsius - ie
freezing to boiling hot). But no naked people, thank god!! There was one
old man who seemed to keep floating closer and closer to Sarah but it was
time to go anyway, at that point. Off to Czech Republic tomorrow with a
quick coffee break in Vienna.

Talk to you again soon!

Jen, Sarah and Mark Journal Entry Budapest Posted On: 7/10/2005