Chad and Catherine's Adventures in London

Szechenyi Baths

Most of you know me as a self professed, type-A personality who doubles as a massive planner.  Therefore, going on vacation with me generally means I've read one or two guide books in advance and have a packed agenda thought through, including contingency plans for if it rains, etc.  After all, I would never want to leave a place feeling like I missed something big and important! :)  Clearly, this is pre-motherhood.  I've chilled out considerably and learned that you just don't accomplish as much with a toddler in tow.  I fought this for a while, but now I've adapted and understand if you just pick one thing you want to do each day (verses 17), you will not only make that happen, but can find great satisfaction in just focusing on the joy of that one activity.

For our first full day in Budapest, that activity was the Szechenyi Baths in City Park.  According to my favorite travel guide writer - Rick Steves - this is THE top attraction in Budapest.  The city evidently has 123 natural hot-water springs and some two-dozen official thermal baths.  The baths are actually operated by the same government system (left over from communism) and get this - are part of the health care system in this country!  I'm in heaven.

 

There are fancier baths in town, but Szechenyi is where the locals go and is also family friendly.  So we found ourselves soaking with the "Magyar" locals in this massive complex.  The day couldn't have been more beautiful and the people watching was at peak.  I even saw two rather large, grandfather-age men in tight black speedos walk up and warmly bump bellies with one another as a friendly greeting - no hand shake, no hug - just a little belly rub between friends.  Hilarious.  What a mix of people - fine young things clearly on the make, couples, grandparents, even chess players were all soaking up the sunshine and different mineral waters.  In our photos, you'll see massive outdoor pools.  There were also about 9 indoor pools - from cold dunk to massively hot - all crammed with people. 

William had a blast.  He attends swim lessons weekly at home, but this was an entirely new adventure.  There was a lazy river, spouting fountains and jets, wading pools and lots of friendly people that really found him entertaining.  We were there for about 3 hours total and he was simply wiped after all the hard playing.  Chad took him back to our apartment and Margaux and I had thirty minute oriental massages to top off our bath experience - for less that $20 each! 

Thanks Rick Steves.  This was our top experience in Budapest.

Greenwich, England

The weather this past weekend was amazing. Simply amazing.  On Sunday morning, we decided to take  a day trip to Greenwich which is just to the southeast of the City of London, right on the Thames River. Surprisingly, it only took us about 45 minutes on the tube to arrive right in the heart of this beautiful and historic waterfront town.

Greenwich is packed full of history.  It is best known for two things: (1) it's significant naval history and (2) the birthplace of Greenwich Mean Time which we all know as "GMT".  Much of the House of Tudor originates from Greenwich (see plaque below) and it was awe inspiring to stand at the "Royal Steps" where Royalty from hundreds of years back would have stepped off their various elaborate boats from a trip from "the continent", Windsor castle or even the Tower of London.

The Royal Steps

 

House of Tudor:

 
 

Our full Greenwich photo album: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/TrIyVk2XiZVnP7qnqIlrKg?feat=directlink

From Greenwich

More info on Greenwich from wikipedia:

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is a term originally referring to mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. It is commonly used in practice to refer to Coordinated Universal Time(UTC) when this is viewed as a time zone, especially by bodies connected with the United Kingdom, such as the BBC World Service,^[20] the Royal Navy, the Met Officeand others, although strictly UTC is an atomic time scale which only approximates GMT with a tolerance of 0.9 second. It is also used to refer to Universal Time (UT), which is a standard astronomical concept used in many technical fields and is referred to by the phrase Zulu time.

As the United Kingdom grew into an advanced maritime nation, British mariners kept at least one chronometer on GMT in order to calculate their longitude from the Greenwich meridian, which was by convention considered to have longitude zero degrees (this convention was internationally adopted in the International Meridian Conference of 1884). Note that the synchronization of the chronometer on GMT did not affect shipboard time itself, which was still solar time. But this practice, combined with mariners from other nations drawing from Nevil Maskelyne's method of lunar distances based on observations at Greenwich, eventually led to GMT being used worldwide as a reference time independent of location. Most time zones were based upon this reference as a number of hours and half-hours "ahead of GMT" or "behind GMT".