Bathing like the locals do

We visited Memento Park the next day as part of our Communist tour and it was a major disappointment. First, the agency screwed up and thus we only managed to do the tour on our second day instead of the first. Next the tour guide didn’t actually offered any interesting information and only did a short spiel so we actually spent a lot of time traveling to hear basically nothing. Memento Park was really just a park filled with statues from the communist era, and even then, there weren’t that many statues and it wasn’t even that big. The only thing that was mildly exciting was the film ‘Life of An Agent’ which explains communist secret service operations. They also had the Trabant, the East German people’s car but it wasn’t very well maintained so it was a bit disgusting to get in to take photos.

Communism's dream car

We followed that up with a walking tour which was really good, so the day wasn’t spoilt at least. We learnt that when the communists took over, they only built over the areas which were destroyed in the war, but left the rest of the buildings untouched, which was lucky for everyone I guess.  Our walking tour covered both the Buda and the Pest area so we covered quite a bit of ground.  It was worth it though and we were lucky to have a good guide.  We ended the tour up at Castle Hill, but it was late so we couldn’t enter any of the buildings to have a look-see. Our guide did recommended that we do the Labyrinth of Buda Castle as they had a special evening session where you can walk around with an oil lamp in the dark. It was a bit freaky but also quite fun, we had a few scares and a few laughs so still worth it in the end.

What's left of Stalin

We finished the day with a cruise down the Danube River. There were a few companies running cruises but we went with Legenda Cruise as it provided personal headsets as well as 2 glasses of champagne. The evening cruise was definitely a good idea as it provides a very different view of Budapest and it was wonderful to see the buildings all lit up at night. Parliament, which was supposedly modeled after Westminster, was really grand and absolutely stunning. Gellert Statue up above on Gellert Hill was also pretty imposing at night. The only thing about an eveing cruise was that we didn’t have time to visit Margaret Island, which was a pity. Oh well, perhaps next time.

Romancing down the River Danube

Hungary's answer to Westminster

One of the very last things we did before leaving Budapest, was of course to visit its famous baths!!! There were two famous baths, Gellert and Szechenyi. We chose Szechenyi partly cos we couldn’t find Gellert, haha… Szechenyi is the largest thermal spring bath complex not only in Budapest but in Europe as well. We went there early but apparently not early enough, it was crazy crowded and almost impossible to book a massage with them. In the end we managed to find some other massage within the complex but it was privately run so it was a bit more expensive than what Szechenyi charges. The massage was weird though as they had only one woman masseur with the rest being men. Obviously I requested for the woman since it would have been too weird to get a guy masseur. There were supposed to be three outdoor pools, with two for soaking and one for serious swimming. One of the soaking pools was closed for maintenance so it was a bit crowded at the other pool. There were also fifteen indoor pools so while it was fun to keep dipping into different pools, it also got a bit confusing walking around the place. We seemed to be the only Chinese there and sometimes people were really staring at us, still it was a pretty fun thing to do. Definitely recommended to buy tickets beforehand (you should be able to buy them from any hotel) to avoid the queues, otherwise just go really early or late.

With one last dip in the pool, we ended our journey in Budapest and headed for Levoca for some knights in shining armor!