Day 70 - The True Underground

When we last left our hero, ignorant tourist office people were running him all over Budapest and not helping him find anything. Well, I did what any vigilante would do. I took matters into my own hands, finding the addresses of the attractions online and using the interactive map to look them up.

• To The Caves! The caves you get access to with the Budapest card were a little tricky to find. One was unmarked on my map, and the other was well off the edge. [Blain the Hero music kicks up.] It took quite a while to get to the first cave. It involved a bus, metro, tram, and a lot of walking. The walking wasn't really essential, but I prefer to walk in areas I haven't been in yet. You never know what you'll run across. I ran across a traffic jam. I actually had theme music for ten minutes or so as my walking was just as fast as a car in traffic blaring hip hop. I didn't bust a move, though. I always regret it when I leave a move unbusted. [music dies] Still, I had places to be, obscure places. Much like Venice, there are almost no street signs here. You have to look on the sides of buildings, and it is not uncommon for only one of the four appropriate buildings to actually have a sign on it. I don't know how the drivers around her cope. I was relying on intuition as it was, finding a street with a name only similar to one on my map and finding my way regardless. I had five whole minutes to spare, even.
• Wussy Cave. The first cave had no warning about being difficult for the faint of heart to traverse, so I call it the wussy cave. It was still pretty, with cauliflower shaped formations. It was cool, as well, a welcome respite from the hot days we've had here. It doesn't seem that hot on the weather.com web site, but when the sun shines down between the buildings, it gets very warm. Those thirty mile an hour winds they write up on the web site are often only encountered when you get out on the bridge over the river.
• Nav Bomb. After the wussy cave, I had twenty minutes to make it to the other cave. Because it was off the edge of my map, I had no idea whether it was even close enough to make it there in twenty minutes. Meh. Let's jog. So I jogged it on over. Despite the fact that none of the streets seemed to be going in the right directions or connected in the way I thought, I made it with two minutes to spare. Then they told me the tour was starting fifteen minutes later. Wah. I still rock!
• Big Cave. Big cave was pretty cool. It's got some formations with fun mythology. There's a rock haning out of the ceiling, looking like it's ready to fall. The rumor is it will only fall on someone if they've been unfaithful. All the couples giggle, some more nervously than others. There's also the witches kitchen (with "pots" on the walls made by carbon dioxide bubbles). Supposedly you can call out the name of your favorite food and it will be waiting for you when you get home. We'll see. ;)
• Vasarely. Hungary's father of something called Op-Art has a museum here. As far as I can tell, Op-Art is drawing lots of geometric shapes with lots of gradients and mathematical transforms. It's a lot like Escher only less obviously mind bending. If you actually try to analyze a picture and pick out patterns, you could probably spend a goodly amount of time on them. In fact, the feeling that I got was that these might be paintings for geniuses. If you had a two hundred IQ, you'd probably just look at them and see the six or seven patterns that contributed to a particular piece. I, on the other hand, just enjoyed staring at them, following a pattern or two at a time. The green X-shaped "Ferde" is the ultimate X-box logo. Bill Gates! Buy it! Market with it! Be cool like me!!!11!1 (You can see lots of what I saw at Vasarely's web site. It's Macromedia Flash, just so ya know.)
• Palace of Miracles. The miracle being its disappearance. I still can't find the damn thing, even knowing it's address. I'm thinking it's hidden in the mall somewhere. It can't possibly be as cool as it would have to be to justify the time I've spent, so I may just do a day trip somewhere else tomorrow. Then it's back to Prague.

Okay. It's time to turn in. Party on! (Did I mention they play dance music in this internet cafe?) [/me busts a move]