Budapest

Hi!

Since I love it so much (and I might not do it much the next few months, I’m saving for a few big trips), I decided my first post should be about travelling.

I’ve been to Budapest a few weeks ago, and wow! I have no other word for it. Wow! What a beautiful city. I wanted to go to Budapest for years, ever since I saw a documentary about the famous thermal baths a few years ago, and this year I finally convinced my best friend to come with me.

I’ll start with where we slept. We booked a bed & breakfast through booking.com, House Beletage. Such a great little hotel style B&B. It was a nice mixture of Ikea furniture (I love Ikea), and vintage influences. Also some personal touches, which was lovely.

We did some sightseeing with a hop on hop off bus (we were such tourists), which was okay. We saw a lot, even if it was full of obnoxious tourists, especially the night tour was impressive. I loved the architecture in Budapest. Such beautiful buildings. Usually in a city you have a nice building here, a church there, another good looking building a few blocks further, but Budapest was just full of them!

The thermal baths. Oh, where do I start? 

Palatinus beach

We went to the Széchenyi baths first, which are lovely. Since they’re the most famous baths, they’re also the most pricey, and full of tourist, but you just have to do them. You can get massages and pedicures as well there, although I would recommend booking them early, since we got there in the afternoon, and the pedicure was already fully booked. The day after that we went to the Palatinus beach on the Margaret Island.  This complex had 11 pools, of which two were thermal baths. I honestly think I liked this one better than Széchenyi. It was much quieter, not as many tourists, and the vibe was just much more relaxed. We had a lovely lunch there as well (if you go to Hungary or Budapest, try the cucumber salad! It’s delicious), and spent the whole day tanning and relaxing. 

We had lovely lunches and dinners in local restaurants, but if I want to tell you about one, it’s Kazimir. It’s located at the Kazinczy Utca. (Utca means street. I learned some Hungarian when I was there.) It’s a street full of nice looking restaurants, but we went to Kazimir since a colleague of mine recommended it. I had the farmers breaded chicken breast with parsley potatoes and a cucumber salad(!!). It was like a little party in my mouth! I also tasted some local wine (which was cheaper then water, can you believe that?), it was okay, but kind of dry, and I prefer the sweeter kind.

All by all, I can only tell you Budapest is amazing. I think it must have been a very rich city once upon a time, but all faded glory now. It has the most glorious buildings I have ever seen, sadly most of them could really use some renovation works. All of them are beautiful, but the renovated ones are just breathtaking.

Have you ever been to Budapest? Or is it on your to do list? It should be. Let me know!

Love, Joyce