Széchenyi Baths

Széchenyi are one of the famous baroque baths in Budapest. My friends and me went there on the last day of my stay in the evening.

The baths have three main pools, which are located outside: A warm pool with a bubble bath in the middle and something like a tunnel around this bath with a funny drift. In the middle there's a pool with rather cool water like you will find it everywhere for swimming lanes. The third one is not only warm, but almost too warm. It's really cozy there, but after a while you get dizzy and it's definitely nothing for people with vein problems.
The problem about all this is that no matter how cold it is, you will have to walk around outside to get to these pools.

Inside of the building there are saunas, restin rooms and more pools with different temperatures.
An advice for Germans: You have to were bathing clothes even in the sauna!! This is also the point I didn't like so much. To German standards, the sauna seemed to be a bit too unhygienic, because the people just sat down on the benches without putting a towel under them first and the water from the clothes got in the air, which made the sauna rather a steam bath.

The price was at my time 2.800 HUF for a closet. When you left after two hours, you got back 300 HUF. In retrospect I would even say that this is not so difficult, because one can't stay in warm water for hours.

So apart from the sauna I'd recommend this baths - alone to see this wonderful architecture.

The baths are expensive by Budapest standards but well worth it- you can get reasonable deal if for a changing room and all day at the bath. Take a book, towel, swimsuit, suncream, picnic and a hat and pitch up for the day. With a series of heated baths, saunas, outdoor swimming pools and a great range of spa treatments (extra), it is hard not to be clean by the time you leave! Whichever baths you chose, make sure you do visit one- its a very relaxing experience amongst the chaos of travelling

Zcéchenyi Baths is the only Spa and Thermal Baths on the Pest side. It's situated on the northern end of the City Park. The building is grand and the baths are large.

The premises have fantastic arcitecture, and the water was so warm (38degrees Centigrades). Simply wonderful to just lie there and relax. They also have a more swimmingpool like pool too, but we stayed in the hot, relaxing water of the smaller pool.

The kids had a great time there as this pool had a buble bath and also a cirular thing in the middle where the water went so fast round that you had a hard time keeping up. But it sure was fun. There were stairs around the entire pool, which made it ideal for us to sit there and watch both the kids and our belongings.

It's open (obviously) to both men and women, and you get back anywhere from 200 - 800 HUF on your deposit if you leave within 2 - 4 hours before 3pm and 300/600 HUF if you leave withinh 2 - 3 hours after 3pm.

This is well worth a visit and I think we all wished we had gone back here, instead of trying out Gellert.

PS. We were told not to shot pics here. Not that we could understand why, since a lot of people did. But maybe we stood out with our NIKON cams... LOL
(We grabed our cellphones after that, so I will upload some of those pics, as soon as I can fine the usb cord.)

Another very popular spa for both locals and tourists which surrounds 3 pools of different temperatures. The temperature ranges from 27ºC/80.6ºF to 34ºC/93ºF with the hottest 38ºC/100.4ºF. Winter or summer, chess is played in the shallow waters of the 34ºC/93ºF water of one of the pools. the interesting thing is that this Bath was established by accidentally finding a hot spring gushing out 38ºC/100.4ºF water when drilling for a water well. The temperature and pressure is always consistent and the cooler pool temperatures are controlled down by adding cold water.

The Spa construction finished in 1913 in a neo baroque style. It is the largest of it's kind in Europe. The minerals in the water are effective in healing dermatological problems, gynecological disorders as well as diseases of the nervous and digestive systems

The location is easy to find since the spa is located behind Hero's Square in the lush surroundings of the City Park. the yellow subway/metro stops right at the entrance Széchenyi Furdo.

This is the Bath we enjoyed the most of the two we went to. The warmer pool had water currents, jacuzzi, massage spring which was a lot of fun. The kids loved the water currents and the massage spring coming up was fun for pretending having done a big fart LOL...Still, that's kids for you.

Liz and i just enjoyed the warm water ingeneral but we also had a go at the water current:)
Funny enough i was the only one spoken to about not taking photos at the bath even if EVERYONE was taking pictures but here are some of mine anyways LOL

http://www.spa.hu/angol/szechenyispa_en.html You can read more about the Bath at this link...

The Széchenyi Baths are known as a Turkish style bath and have baths both indoors and out. The architecture itself is something to go look at. The statues, fountains, and buildings are all beautiful. The bath provides you with many options to choose from and you can spend all day hopping from one bath to another just trying out the different temperatures. There are really cold baths, really hot baths and baths in-between. Some have whirlpools. There are even a few baths inside that they consider healing baths because they have sulfur in them. You also have the option of going into a few different saunas while you are there. This can be made into an all day event or you can just do it to relax after a day of a lot of walking and sightseeing. If you really want to relax you can also schedule a massage. My friends and I loved going to the baths while we lived there. We even saw Vince Vaughn while we were there!

I was really looking forward to checking out the baths in Budapest, but to be honest was quite disappointed in the entire experience. The Szechenyi baths are supposed to be some of the most famous. In fact, they seemed no different than glorified swimming pools with some tacky decorations. Some of the outdoor pools had jets that would periodically shoot up bubbles, and another had a donut-shaped loop that whisked people around along a circular current. These novelties were fun for approximately 5 minutes.

Budapest has a long history of Turkish baths. I was there a few years ago with a group of college students and we went to Széchenyi Baths which is part of the huge city park. Its got great unisex outdoor pools with fountains and backgammon boards and lots of people enjoying the sun. Inside it has massages and the actual Turkish baths which are divided by sex. Széchenyi Baths is inexpensive and where a lot of locals go, there are other baths all over town, but I wanted to go where the locals go. There were signs in English and I just followed what the other people were doing and had a great time.

Also in Budapest is a museum called the House of Terror. It is a museum devoted to the Nazi and Communist eras in Budapest. It is housed in the former police headquarters for both of those groups and is fairly new with really interesting exhibits. The audio tour is in English and does a great job of explaining what is going in each of the exhibits.

Have fun in Budapest, it is a great, friendly city.