This American Pale Ale pours a crystal clear orangish gold color. It has a very strong aroma of some sweet citrus and a bit of pine. Another interesting note was that it had a slight spicy solventy aromas, which I remembered well from a homebrew I made with a lot of East Kent Goldings hops, but you can never really know for sure if that is what they used as well. The beer enters the mouth very lively with notes of grapefruit peel and pine. Again that solventy spicy taste appears, and the beer overall finishes with a good strong bitterness. I really loved the mouthfeel on the beer because it is so drinkable and crisp, which is the way I generally like my hoppy beers.
One of the highlights of Budapest are its many thermal baths, and over the course of our stay there, Becky and I visited three of these. Day 1 was the Kiraly baths. They are the oldest of the baths, and the smallest. It looks very sketchy from the outside and very rough around the edges, but you forget all of that as soon as you make it into the bath area. A strong sulfur smell fills the air along with steam rising from the thermal pools. It has one main circular pool which has pretty warm water. Flanking it are a very hot pool and a freezing cold one. Furthermore there are a couple of saunas and a steam room, thick as pea soup. Here too, because it was the cheapest of all the baths, we got massages which definitely released a lot of the tension that builds up after having to carry our heavy packs around often. When we finally left the place, I felt like I was floating and incredible relaxed.
The next day was the Gellert Baths, the most expensive of the 3. It features a more well lit interior and a much larger area. It has a large swimming pool area and two separate rooms of thermal baths. Each thermal room has two big pools, one warm, the other very warm to almost hot. Additionally, there is a steam room and a freezing cold bath. Gellert also has an outside area with a wave pool, which unfortunately was out of season when we were there, as well as a warm pool. It also has a traditional Finnish Sauna, which is extremely hot, and a freezing cold pool to dunk yourself in upon exiting the sauna. While the interior of Gellert was prettier, the size made it kind of easy to get lost, and with the wave pool being closed, it was not worth the additional cost.
The final one was the Szechenyi Baths, the most popular for tourists. It has a swimming pool, and two outdoor thermal pools, but one was mysteriously drained, resulting in only one warm but very crowded outside pool. The inside had many many different pools, but only a few different temperatures, which for me defeated the purpose of having so many different rooms. It had tons of saunas and steam rooms throughout the place, but most were crowded too. The inside also had a distinct hot dog smell, which was very off-putting and ruined much of the experience.
Kiraly costs 1/3 of either Gellet of Szechenyi, and at that rate was definitely the best value. The other two did not add enough to make it worth the extra fee. Additionally, we like how compact Kiraly was, making it easy to transition from pool to pool. However, if the weather were warm, the Gellert Bath and its big wave pool would have been pretty fun, but I wouldn't recommend Szechenyi since it is very busy, full of tourists, and offers little to justify its expense.
Unfortunately no cameras are allowed inside the baths, so I have no pictures to share, but it really was an incredible experience and very relaxing too.
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