On This Day – Budapest, The Gellért Baths

Even though travel restrictions are easing I am not yet minded to risk it so I still have no new stories to post so I continue to go through my picture archives and see where I was on this day at any time in the last few travelling years.

On 5th November 2014 I was in Budapest at the famous Gellért Spa Hotel…

In 1934 Budapest was awarded the supreme title of ‘Spa City’ and three years later, the first International Balneological Congress was organised and the headquarters of the International Balneological Association was established at the Gellért Thermal Baths in Budapest.

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On This Day – The Bridges of Budapest

Even though travel restrictions are easing I am not yet minded to risk it so I still have no new stories to post so I continue to go through my picture archives and see where I was on this day at any time in the last few travelling years.

On 1st November 2014 I was visiting the Hungarian Capital of Budapest on the River Danube for a second time…

The River Danube is the twenty-ninth longest river in the world and flows through ten countries, which is more than any other river in the World except the Congo in Central Africa, which also runs through ten countries. The River Mississippi in the USA runs through or borders ten different States.

The Danube starts in the Black Forest in Germany and then runs like a European timeline through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and the Ukraine before it finishes its journey by discharging its memories into the Black Sea at the Danube Delta. On route it passes through the four capital cities of Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade.

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Budapest, The Gellért Baths

In 1934 Budapest was awarded the supreme title of ‘Spa City’  and three years later, the first International Balneological Congress was organised and the headquarters of the International Balneological Association was established at the Gellért Thermal Baths in Budapest.

The Congress explained this decision with the following statement:

“…no city can put forward a stronger claim to this than Budapest.  Endowed by nature with a wonderful generosity of excellent thermal waters and unrivalled natural beauty; additionally, its high medical professionalism, the excellent equipment of its healing institutions, the high level of scientific research, makes Budapest the optimum choice for international affairs of balneology to be handled from here…”

One of the main attractions of the Hotel was that attached are the famous Gellért baths, which although originally built as part of the hotel are now owned and run by the local council but with free admission to hotel guests.  In the TV travel series ‘New Europe’, Michael Palin used the baths and made it all seem a bit confusing and a lot of trouble but I can confirm that there was no truth in that at all, the instructions were clear and all of his theatrical pacing of corridors looking for the lift was all contrived for effect.

The entrance to the baths used to be via an old-fashioned cage elevator with doors that slammed closed with a penitentiary like rattle and metallic thud and there was an old lady attendant who provided an admission card to the baths on the way down, it was still like this on our first visit in 2007  but that has all been modernised now, which is a shame, and entrance is directly through the hotel and into a modern reception area.

This was very straight forward but then, I have to say, it did get confusing with corridors and stairways that eventually led to a locker room and then more corridors and stairways that led to the swimming pool.

After changing we used the thermal baths that were a very incrementally agreeable 36˚ and 38˚ centigrade and housed in a room of  soaring marble pillars, colourful mosaic floors and pools of crystal blue water with alleged magical healing powers.  There was an anorexic looking man with a pale pallor jogging limply around the room and I wondered for a moment or two if I was going to feel thirty years younger just like all those old timers did in the film Cocoon.

I did feel good afterwards but not that good, I have to say!  The eucalyptus steam room was totally relaxing but the plunge pool knocked the breath from me and necessitated a hasty return to 38˚.  I am not sure that this is the correct way to progress through the experience I confess. Next door was the swimming pool with cream mosaic floor and sky blue tiled walls and a high glazed ceiling proving soft natural light.  Budapest is famous for its thermal baths and these were busy with local people relaxing in the water after a day at work and we enjoyed the experience with them after five hours of walking up and down those hills around the city.

I have to say that I am not a great one for swimming pools and spas I have to admit and I am definitely not one for treatments.  Kim and Margaret went for a punishing massage, Sue and Christine stayed a while longer to swim, Mike went to the railway station to do some sightseeing and I went back to the room for a beer.

I am a great one for bars however and when Mike returned and invited me to the cheap pub around the corner I didn’t take a lot of convincing so wandered around for a couple of pre dinner drinks.

For our final night we were returning to the Greek restaurant.  I had to concede that the Taverna Dionysos was a splendid place with a good menu and excellent food.  I would have liked to say that we found an ethnic Hungarian restaurant that was its equal but sadly I can’t so for a second time in three nights we sat down to a traditional Greek meal.

After our meal it was still quite early so instead of  going directly back to the hotel we walked along a busy main road and looked for somewhere for a final Budapest drink.  It was turning colder with a north wind sweeping down from the Tatra Mountains in Slovakia and blowing sharply down the river as though someone had left the back door open.  We weren’t dressed for this so we quickened our pace and was grateful of the warmth of  a modern bar full of young people  where we had that final drink before returning to the Hotel Gellért.  It was a real shame that this was our final night!

The following morning we made our purchases at the indoor market, had a last slice of cake at the hotel and then made our way back to the airport on the metro and the shuttle bus.

I have to confess that Budapest was an absolute revelation, I had not been expecting anything so grand, it was easily as good as Vienna and in my opinion much better than Prague, the scale of the city eclipses Bratislava and Ljubljana and I liked it as well as any other I have visited.

Budapest, The Danube and the Bridges

The Hotel Gellért was no more than one hundred yards from the west bank of the River Danube.  From our bedroom window this was our first real view of the famous waterway which at one thousand eight hundred miles is the second longest river in Europe after the Volga.

It is the twenty-ninth longest river in the world and flows through ten countries, which is more than any other river in the World except the Congo in Central Africa, which also runs through ten countries.  The River Mississippi in the USA runs through or borders ten different States.  

The Danube starts in the Black Forest in Germany and then runs like a European timeline through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and the Ukraine before it finishes its journey by discharging its memories into the Black Sea at the Danube Delta.  On route it passes through the four capital cities of Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest and Belgrade.

It was flowing quite briskly through Budapest today and its appearance was brown and muddy and disappointed those in the party who were expecting to see the sort of Blue Danube that inspired the composer Johann Sebastian Strauss to write his famous waltz.  I doubt that the Danube is ever really blue and I wonder if Johan was taking mind-altering substances at the time.

We began our walk by crossing the Liberty Bridge opposite the hotel.  This is an iron bridge, three hundred yards long and the top of its four masts are decorated with large bronze statues of the Turul bird (a sort of eagle) which in mythology gave rise to the story of the origin of the Magyars.

Magyars are an ethnic group primarily associated with Hungary and were the main inhabitants of the early Kingdom.  The word Magyar in the Hungarian language refers both to the ethnicity of the people and their language and that explains why the word appears prominently on Hungarian postage stamps and bank notes.

It isn’t the original bridge of course because it had been built in 1896 but blown up by the Germans in 1945 as they abandoned the city and retreated away from the advancing Russian Red Army.  Around about this time at the end of the Second-World-War the Germans blew up most of the bridges in Europe except, rather bizarrely and allegedly on the express orders of Adolf Hitler himself, the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.  apparently he had a soft spot for the bridge – perhaps he had attached a love lock on it for himself and Eva?

Along the Pest side of the river, which is rather flat, there were some good views of the Buda on the west which is much more dramatic and protrudes into the river forcing it to flow in an sweeping arc through the city and on the hills behind the Liberation Monument and the Imperial Castle were impressively illuminated against the blue autumn sky.

There were some modern western hotels overlooking the river and outside the call girls promenaded looking for customers.  On a scale of one to ten for attractiveness they were all about minus five and judging by their looks they were going to be hanging around for some time yet or at least until someone became too intoxicated for it to matter.  Further down the road we looked out for a man selling brown paper bags!

We walked as far as the Chain Bridge which is an impressive structure that was designed by the English engineer William Tierney-Clark and constructed by Scottish engineer Adam Clark (no relation) and is a larger scale version of Tierney-Clark’s earlier Bridge across the River Thames in Marlow in Buckinghamshire.  It was opened in 1849 and was the first permanent bridge between the two separate cities of Buda and Pest, which had previously relied on pontoon bridges or barges and ferries for getting from one side to the other.  Not the original bridge of course – that had been blown up!

To complete the bridges of Budapest tour we walked now across the slender concrete and steel cable structure of the Elizabeth Bridge.  For some reason the 1950s reconstruction did not follow the original bridge design as with the Liberty and the Chain bridges but the modern replacement is elegant enough and swoops in an attractive single white concrete arch across the river.

By the time that we had walked the banks of the Danube and crossed the bridges it was late afternoon so we returned to the hotel to rest and get ready for a night out.  My preference was for a traditional Hungarian restaurant and a plate of spicy goulash but Kim had other ideas and remembering how good a Greek restaurant had been on a previous visit to Budapest had booked a table for eight o’clock.  I complained about this but at the end of the evening and after an excellent meal (even though I prefer to eat Moussaka in Santorini or Mykonos) was forced to concede that she had made an excellent decision.

Budapest, Fine Weather and Speed Sightseeing

First thing this morning I was anxious to see if the weather was as good as I had anticipated and I was delighted when I opened the shutters on the window to be confronted with a crisp clear morning and a breathtaking sunrise tip-toeing over the Danube and introducing a perfectly clear blue sky to the day.  Things looked very, very promising indeed.

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Budapest, The Gellért Baths – Art Deco Thermal Relaxation

Leaving the Castle District we crossed the Chain Bridge again and into Roosevelt Square on the Pest side of the Danube and walked about a kilometre to the Parliament building which dominates the river and stands proudly facing the castle on the opposite bank.  We didn’t hang about for long because it was late afternoon by now and we wanted to return to the hotel for the health and  wellbeing experience.

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Buda, City of the Hapsburgs

The weather for January was unseasonably warm but an inspection from the hotel bedroom balcony revealed an overcast day with chalky white clouds that hung low over the city and bleached the colour from the buildings on the opposite side of the river. After a quick breakfast with the mobile telephone brigade all having unnecessary and intrusive conversations that spoilt the atmosphere in the breakfast room that the hotel had worked hard to achieve we left the hotel with the intention of exploring the Buda side of the river.

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Hungary, In The Footsteps of Michael Palin

It was a late afternoon flight to Budapest and as the plane was only about two thirds full we considered ourselves rather unfortunate not to get a row of seats entirely to ourselves.  This disappointment actually turned out to be a stroke of luck however because our temporary travelling companion was flying out on business and as he was staying at the same hotel he generously offered a ride in his taxi paid for on company expenses.   I plan to look out for that sort of money saving opportunity again in the future.

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Hotel Gellért, Budapest

In 2008 I visited Budapest and was tempted to stay at the famous spa hotel the Gellért after watching Michael Palin’s ‘New Europe’ when he featured the hotel on his programme.  This is a four star hotel and ordinarily a bit beyond my budget (actually quite a lot beyond my budget) but with a bargain flight at only £11.34 return I considered the additional cost of a superior room with a view over the Danube to be completely justified.

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