Budapest Day 2: "Cinnamon and Oranges"

After sleeping in late to recover from the previous night’s activities, we set out on our quest to experience a traditional Budapest bath.  After buying some European style (read: small) swimsuits we walked across the bridge to the Buda side to go to the Gellert baths, a huge complex with outdoor and indoor Roman style baths.  The lobby area was a huge marble room with high ceilings and a dome center. Here are some pictures from the Gellert website of the two big pools:

After our bath we hiked up the nearby mountain to get a good view of the city.  At the top we could see 360 degrees of the area, it was so beautiful. We ended the sightseeing by walking through the palace and across the cable bridge at sunset. 

Budapest Nightlife: Part 2

That night we planned our own pub crawl using a Time Out magazine and marked up another map with dots.  Finding the bars this night proved just as difficult…

Bar 1:

Accidently ended up at the cave bar again! We sat back in our little cement corner to start off our night. 

Bar 2:

This bar seemed non-existent.  We asked locals that spoke English where it was and they said they had never even heard of it.  One block further and we walk past some guys standing outside of a big door covered with thick, dark fabric and of course it turns out it was the place we were looking for.  This place was also partly outdoors with totally random seating arrangements and interesting art stuck in every corner of each room and all around the ceilings.  We sat at a table next to plywood walls with a big red couch recessed into the back wall.  The bathroom was next to a weird empty room and the stalls were covered with old broken computer keyboards.  We decide to get the party started with some tequila shots and made one of the best discoveries ever.  In Hungary, they take tequila shots with cinnamon and oranges.  Yes, seriously.  You sprinkle cinnamon on each side of an orange wedge and shove it in your mouth after the shot.  It sounds insane but is so far superior to our salt/lime method.  Needless to say we took many tequila shots this night.

Bar 3:

We ended our time in Budapest by going back to the very first bar we went to with the pommel horse seating.  We were brave and took a traditional Hungarian shot, which is not for the faint of heart.