Today we got up early and ventured out to the Gellert Thermal baths, located on the Buda side. Mentions of the water from the springs there can be found in records as early at the 15th century. The hotel and bath were opened in 1918. Hopefully we’ll both feel like teenagers tomorrow!
The style of the baths is very beautiful with lot of ornate tile work. The thermal baths come in different temperatures. I found the 38 degree (100F) to be the most comfortable and Kuah liked the 40 degree (104F) the best. We both tried doing cold plunges in the 16 degree (60F) pool as well. Getting back into the 40 degree pool after having been in the 16 degree pool reminded me of coming inside after having played out in the snow.
To keep things simple Kuah and I chose to get a cabin rather than a locker. This is really just a big changing room that you can lock your stuff in. It is a bit more comfortable than having to change in the locker rooms and made it easier for us to share toiletries.
All in all the thermal baths were very relaxing. We’ll be visiting a thermal lake later in our trip so it will be interesting to see how they differ. We may also check out our local thermal bath. Gellert seemed to mostly have tourists with the same confused look as us when we first arrived.
The other thing we did today was eat a lot of chicken paprikas. For lunch we went to Borbirosag. They gave us a cucumber juice to start the meal. Then I had a refreshing goat cheese salad and a veal dish for the iron. Kuah started with a bowl of goulash which he said tasted a lot like minestrone soup with paprika added. Then he had chicken paprikas with dumplings. I had a taste of it and absolutely loved the smokey flavor.
I loved his dish so much that I decided I wanted chicken paprikas for dinner. Kuah did some online research and found a restaurant nearby, Cafe Intenzo, that had chicken paprikas with goat cheese dumplings. This restaurant’s paprikas sauce wasn’t as good as the lunch one but their goat cheese dumplings were much better. Kuah got a cup of fisherman’s stew and grilled veal liver. He enjoyed the stew but thought the liver wasn’t as good as what he’d had earlier in the week. We shared a side of cucumber which I found helped to cut the richness of my dish.
Kuah and I walked together to Gellert Baths and dinner but I also did a morning and afternoon walk. In total I walked 11.54 miles.
While we’re on the subject of good food we also had a great meal at a Georgian restaurant, Tifliso, yesterday. The highlight of this meal was a cheese bread. You can almost never go wrong when combining cheese and bread! We also had a mixed grilled meats and grilled vegetables. The grilled eggplant was a amazing and I wished they had given us more of it. The meat was tasty but not so different that what you can find elsewhere.
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