Happy Birthday Lynnette:

Well its April 2 and you know what that means, not only is it the day after fools day but its also lynnette's birthday, no there is no correlation between the two. So what did we do you ask. Its was sunday so we were off the Budapest for church after we had a quick lunch we were in a rush to get into relaxation mode. Budapest is famous for it hotspring bathouses so I decided what better way to celebrate Lynnettes first hungarian birthday then to enjoy the riches of Hungarian culture! The bathouse that we went to in is the cities largest park and is the largest hotspring in europe. Its around 100 years old! Bathhouses are as much a part of the culture as goulash and if they could eat the goulash in the pools they probably would. The hotsprings were actually discovered accidentally when they were drilling a well and now we reap the rewards. The main pools are outside but there are many smaller ones hot and cooler inside. In the outside pool there are chess table set up and many of the old men gather around these and watch the intense games going on. Most people spend the whole day in the pools but being newbies to the whole hot water hotter water we left after 3 hours. I know its hard work. I wouldn't wish it upon anyone! There are many things to learn though like when entering the change room there is no key for your locker just a attendendant who locks it when you leave and writes something on the outside, probably something along the lines of pasty white foreginer or something like that, also when swimming in the outside pools, two pools are for all to use one pool can only be used if you wear a swim cap, many made this mistake and where chased out by the guards, why dont ask me! Also in one of the outside pools on the floor of the pool are things that I can only describe as bubble makers. When these go on all must dash for them and stake their claims, these things are only learnt by the keen observing eye so watch carefully, we quickly dashed for one of these and well it sorta feels like a jet in a hot tub and hungarians probably claim these cure a plethora of aliments. When these jets stop all head into the circular area for a little round the pool whirlpool. This is for young and old and if you look in the middle picture the circular area is were this event takes place. Its a great place to get nice and close to a whole lotta people you dont know. Also if you look closely at the picture you can see all the people indivually standing on the claimed jets and have a bubbly old time! The joys of learning the culture, the key we have learnt is just watch and then mimic, you never know what your missing if you never try! We then headed out for dinner and a walk and ended the evening at a cafe for birthday cake. The picture of lynnette and her ice cream cake was obviously not taken there. We had to re-enact later at home, but nobody minds getting happy birthday sung twice, well with me singing many people complain after the first time. Lynnette must be immune to this by now though! But we needed a picture and as you can see we had no candles other than huge matches, oh well gotta do what we can. But it did make one huge flame. Getting back to the cafe, apparently un known to us all of hungary came out to celebrate lynnette birthday. I knew of a neat looking coffee shop so after dinner we headed that way and well apparently theres an election coming up and there was a huge rally at the parliament. The events had just finished and there was a sea of orange flooding the streets it was quite a sight to see. We had a great time sitting outside and watching it all unfold. All in all it was a great day of relaxing and celebrating Lynnettes big day. A beautiful day for a gorgeous wife!