Awoke with the alarm at 7:30. Jess was thrilled to have finally had a more than 5 hours of sleep. Showered, dressed and headed upstairs for breakfast on the balcony - hard-boiled eggs, coldcuts, muesli, rolls with jam, apple juice and tea. Thus fortified, we headed out to the mini-mall above the Spar, where we purchased nail clippers. We then walked across the Margaret bridge, which is not nearly as lovely as the Chain Bridge. Note to self: next time, take the tram over the bridge. Speaking of the tram, we caught the tram down to the subway, which we took to the zoo.
The [urlhttp://www.zoobudapest.com/]Budapest Zoo[/url] isn't very large, but they do have a lot of animals. As you might expect, some of the animals seemed a bit cooped up. They do seem to be taking steps to alleviate the problem, though; there was much construction. The two elephants had a yard to play in that was bigger than the original elephant house, which appears to have housed four elephants and two hippos. We saw almost every animal that the zoo had on offer, including some energetic red pandas, short-tailed river otters, a bald eagle, many rambunctious goats, a lonely monkey, elephants, giraffes, lions, a tiger, and no bears. (Their enclosure was being rebuilt.) We had lunch at the self-service cafeteria, where Jer had a chicken & onion kebab with fries, and Jess had goulash. On the way out, Jess brought us to the adoption office, in which Jess adopted a short-tailed river otter for Jer. The nice Hungarian adoption people didn't know "otter," but fortunately Jer had taken many ottergraphs and was able to show them. After some deliberation, Jer chose to adopt "Joszefina," who was born in Budapest in 1999 and is partnered with a boy otter named Kofi. The adoption people indicated that they're hoping for otter pups soon.
From the zoo, we walked the short distance to the Szechenyi Spa. We realized that they closed fairly late, so we still had time to visit St. Stephen's basilica and come back. We walked to Heroes' Square and jumped onto the blue line bus (having brought our total modes of city surface transport to 4: subway, cable car, funicular, and bus) and blew one stop past St. Stephen's. Fortunately, it was a shortish walk back. We tried to buy Jer trunks or boxers, but couldn't find any for cheap.
St. Stephen's basilica was magnificent, recently renovated and covered in gold leaf. We did not manage to see the Holy Right (the saint's preserved right hand), but we did hear a lovely a capella Ave Maria sung by a group standing in the middle of the church. After admiring the gold leaf, stained glass and stonework, we took the elevator most of the way up to the panorama above the dome. The second elevator took too long to descend, though, so we walked up 137 steps to the lookout point. Just before we reached the balcony, we entered a room where the outside of the church's inner dome was visible. Jess said it was evocative of a "holy missile silo". The 360-degree view of Budapest from the balcony was spectacular, and we were able to take both elevators back down, to Jess's great relief.
We trundled back up Andrassy ut (which is meant to evoke the Champs Elysees, we've heard - it is lovely, but less sweeping than the Champs). We arrived back at the Szechenyi Spa a few minutes before 6 pm. The guidebook warned us that Hungarian bathhouses are perplexing, and it wasn't kidding. We did eventually manage to find bathrooms, get changed (in Jer's case, after renting trunks and a towel), shower and meet up by the swimming pools. The pools were fun, especially the cooler one, which had bubble jets and a ring with a current that carried its occupants along. As indicated in the guidebook, there were old men playing chess in the hot pool. We watched them a bit while soaking our aching tootsies. When we were sufficiently prune-fingered, we got changed (Jess finally managing to rent a towel) and left, getting a $3 refund each for staying less than 2 hours (1:55, in Jess's case!).
We identified a restaurant for dinner and walked halfway down Andrassy ut, only to find that the restaurant had been replaced with something more expensive. So we continued down to Liszt Ferenc ter, a square filled with restaurants and twenty- and thirty-somethings eating, hanging out and checking each other out. The guidebook recommended Menza, so we secured an outdoor table. Jer had mushroom soup, followed by grilled veggies with cheese. Jess had cream of pumpkin soup and creamed asparagus with a fried egg, and we split a tomato salad. Jer had another glass of Hungarian red, and Jess had wonderful homemade citusade (lemon, lime & orange). It was a nice change from the meat-and-potatoes we'd been having. After dinner we walked two doors down to an ice cream shop and finally found cinnamon ice cream. The scooper shaped it into a rose on the cone. It was lovely and delicious.
We were contemplating going to a coffeehouse for a second desert, but we were getting tired and our feet were hurting, so we caught the tram back across the bridge. With the help of our excellent map and Jer's orienteering skills, we managed to optimize our tram time, and had a relatively short and flat walk back to the B&B. We performed our ridiculous media transfer and battery recharging rituals and got to bed at midnight.