Like every city in Europe, Budapest has it's share of churches to visit. We picked one, St. Stephen's Basilica. It was very nice, but it doesn't really stand out among all the churches I've seen.
We walked from the church down a street that intersected Andrassy, an important street in Budapest, to the 150-year-old Dohány Synagogue, the second largest synagogue in the world (the biggest is actually in New York). It's name means "tobacco," because the street it was built on was where a lot of the tobacco business was done (by the Jews).
The inside looks a lot like a cathedral, and if you only took a cursory glance, you'd never even realize it was a synagogue. In fact, when it was built, some Jews were so unahppy with how much is resembled a cathedral that they built another, more traditional synagogue nearby.
Traditionally, people are not supposed to be buried outside synagogues, but during the Holocaust, a lot of Jews in Budapest were killed and could not safely be buried in a Jewish cemetery, so an exception was made. The people buried here, though, all died in 1944 and 1945. There is also a memorial in the yard, with sculptures and names of people who helped the Jews during the war.
For lunch, we went to the Great Market Hall, where there are lots of food stands with produce and pastries on the first floor and souvenirs on the second. I had langos, fried potato bread that is popular in Hungary. Holly and I also browsed through the souvenirs but didn't actually get anything. They had some really funny Russian dolls (the doll within a doll within a doll) that I almost bought, though. They had the traditional ones, but also Britney Spears, the Beatles, Kiss, and others. There were also a bunch for world leaders, with some variety for the US: there were Obama ones, Democratic presidents, Republican presidents, and Bill Clinton -- inside whom was Monica Lewinsky, then I think Linda Tripp, then someone else, then a cigar.
After eating we went to the baths at the Gellert spa. They had seperate steam baths for men and women, so we started in the private women's baths. They're naturally warm, but they smell like "minerals." By minerals, I mean sulfur. It was kind of reassuring to hear that it was sulfur, though, because the smell made me nervous for a bit. It was really comfortable, except for one thing: because this was for women only, a lot of the women were walking around naked. Just hangin' out. In the nude. I saw much more than I needed to. And thought you might think I'd be used to it after FHM, I'll tell you something: these women were not FHM models. Not even close. And it makes a difference. (Also, it's in person, and I knew what I was getting myself into at FHM).
There were other co-ed pools, including one outside. We got massages and facials in the spa, and by then we were ready to head back to the hotel to shower and get ready for dinner. We ate at a place on the Pest side along the river, where we could see their Statue of Liberty. It was too far away to get a good picture of, but our cab driver when we arrived pointed it out to us, saying that they had a Statute of Liberty too, like ours in New York. It's much, much smaller, but I thought that was cute.
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