At Christmas last year my cousin, Therese, told me she would give me three of her vacation days and I could decide where we would go. There was no doubt in my mind as I've wanted to go to Budapest for a few years now, and having three days in addition to the weekend meant we'd actually have some time to explore a little. But as it turned out, (and lets be honest, I should have realised) we love shopping and we're not as fast as we should be. But I'll start at the beginning. We arrived in Budapest Friday afternoon and knew we had a few hours before we needed to get ready for the evening. Having traveled from early morning we needed food, so we headed to Hard Rock Cafe, but took our time walking there, taking in the new sights. It's a bit of a tradition for me to go Hard Rock Cafe. I don't normally do it when I'm alone, but when I have a travel buddy I do, because I have a rule; I have to eat or drink something in the cafe if I want to buy a souvenir. And I have quite the Hard Rock Cafe glass collection now. Out of the Hard Rock Cafes I've been I unfortunately have to say that this was the least impressive, the food was fine, but not as good as I expected and the waiter was a bit odd, he even asked if he could take the tip when I left a large forint bill and therefore needed change. I've never had a waiter ask me that before, and I deem it as rude. If I want to leave the tip I'll leave it after I've gotten my change.
Anyways, after our early dinner we checked out the Christmas market. I have seen a few Christmas markets before but I really liked this, it might not be as pretty as the one we have in Oslo (it really is wonderfull and you can check out photos in the gallery), but it has a lot more to offer in terms of goods. We didn't really buy anything as we wanted to wait with gift shopping til we'd been to the mall and knew that we were making the right choices, but instead we took it all in and filed ideas away in the back of our minds. Then we tried the Chimney cake, or Sekler as I believe the Hungarians call it. It's not fantastic, but it's certainly not bad, and walking around the market eating a hot cake that they just cooked over coals in front of you really has it's charm. After getting the cake it was time to get back to our hotel and get ready for the night. We walked back through a lovely Christmas decorated street, I was definitely not the only one taking photos.
We got ready while having a little drink and then made our way though town again. We had tickets for a bar crawl. But this bar crawl was organised in the strangest way. Normally they'll give you a 30-60 minute time window to show up, and normally it's at a bar. But this said to meet at 9 pm, in front of a Burger King. We were about 10 minutes early and we didn't move for at least 30 minutes, which got really cold. Then, when we did move, we had to walk for 15 minutes, back the way we had come from. Standing in the cold for 30 minutes after walking for 20, only to be told you're walking for 15 again doesn't set a good tone for the night.
The crawl did however give us some okay deals, we were given a booklet with the deals in it. We then visited a handful of ruinbars. Some of these were really strange. It's a cultural thing, so I'm guessing you won't see these many other places than Budapest. And in a way it's a cool concept, but not all of them are executed in a good way. And as with many bar crawls, we didn't really like the night club it ended up at, so we went back to the second to last one, which was a nightclub too really.
The plans for Saturday was to explore the city a bit. This was the day with the best weather forecast, and you don't really need fantastic weather to shop so the best one was to be spent outside. We got up fairly early despite not having much sleep, and headed towards the river and across it. We walked around for a few hours and tried to find some geocaches, with little luck really but we found some at least. And then we found a bistro where we could get some food, and hot drinks as the wind was getting a bit sour and we needed to get the warmth back into us. We ended up taking a bit longer than I had anticipated, as always, so we crossed the river again a bit sooner than planed and made our way towards the parliament building. The plan was to watch the sun set from here, but we couldn't get high enough for that at this spot, so I got the shots I could before it went behind some buildings and then we started walking back towards the hotel, while still trying to geocache a little. But some were difficult to find, and some had people standing/sitting right next to it. But at least we got to take in the sights this Saturday and I got some nice shots of the city.
We were pretty tired from the day/night before so when we got back to the hotel we had a nap before getting ready for another night out in the city. Then we headed across town for a buffet dinner. The food wasn't all that great, but what can you expect from a £20 buffet. We tried some interesting food and had a relaxed dinner with wine included in the price. One thing did stand out to me though; the orange chocolate cake, it was amazing. And the desserts were all really small, so you could easily try different things.
After dinner we walked to a lovely little bar, Tuk tuk. They only have a couple dozen seats or so and won't let anyone stand. They serve you at the table (or the bar if you've gotten one of the few seats there), and you get cucumber water as well as your ordered drink. So it's a fancy place. But so worth the visit. We had two cocktails each before the bar closed, we were a bit late getting out, and mine were absolutely amazing. I think Therese was a little disappointed with one of hers, but I guess that's the risk you take when ordering new and exciting looking things. I had an Ink, and looking at the ingredients I did not expect it to be black, but it was! I even got a feather to write with. The drink tasted fantastic, one of the best drinks I've ever had really; fruity and fresh. Then I had an Asian pornstar martini, the prosecco shot that normally accompanies the pornstar martini was switched out with a sweet sparkly sake shot, and the drink was fruity, I loved them both. After the cocktails we went to Doboz, we had originally planed to go to another place, but as we were both a bit tired we decided to walk back towards the hotel rather than farther away from it. And it turned out pretty good. We quite liked the atmosphere in Doboz, which is another ruinbar and nightclub. We ended up taking it easy, but had a few drinks there, talked to a few people and stayed til about 4am.
Sunday! Our relaxing day, but not until after a "few" hours of shopping. We got up after only a few hours sleep and got to Arena Mall around 11 am. We started going through the shops systematically, had lunch at the food court after a couple of hours, and then kept going. By the end of the day we were tired, our feet hurt and I had bought more than I thought I would. Clothing and such is not a lot cheaper in Budapest than it is in Norway, but they have different shops, and a lot of them are, in my opinion, a bit better than a lot of what we have in Norway. And I really like some of the fashion right now, it's sparkly. Therese didn't find as much though, and we realised we had to keep going the next day. So we headed back to the hotel. And after relaxing a bit we ordered pizza (Dominos) to the room, found a Captain America film, in Hungarian, on the TV and ate on the bed. Then we pampered ourselves a little with facial masks, and I fell asleep long before the film was done. I guess I was really tired.
We hadn't set the alarm for the Monday morning, which was nice, but we still woke up early. So we had time to shower and take our time getting ready before heading out for another day of shopping. This wasn't initial the plan. I'd hoped we could do a Turkish bath and then go to the Christmas market, have a relaxed day. But we still had need for some real shopping, so we went to another shopping centre after stopping by a small shop at the metro station, for Christmas gift bags, they were so nice. We tried to be effective and get through the shopping centre as quickly as possible, but one still has to eat. So we decided to treat ourselves a little and sat down at Friday's. They had put up all these nice Christmas decorations so it was really cosy. I actually decided to be a little adventurous with my food, for once, and got the more expensive thing. Beer smoked New York strip steak. It wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped, but it was okay. I really loved the mashed potato though. I'm a sucker for good mashed potatoes. After lunch we went to C&A, I was surprised to find so many things I wanted to try on and Therese finally found many things she liked. So that was a hit. We powered through the rest of the mall and made our way to the Christmas market, we still had things to get there, and there were a few shops we wanted, again, here. I was looking for a present I wanted for my niece, but the previous shops hadn't had her size, so I wanted to make another try in another one of this chains' stores, and had luck. And Therese wanted to try C&A again, there was another one of those by the market too. And it was a good thing, she found the last few things she had wanted to buy on this trip, dresses. Then we hit the market, swirling through like a whirlwind and getting some more presents sorted. I really did like this market, so many nice hand crafted things. We had planed to go out for dinner, but had realised time would be short, so instead we stopped by Subway on our way back to the hotel so we could eat quickly and take the time we needed to get ready for the night.
We had some special plans this evening, and I was really looking forward to it. Boozecruise!
What better way to finish off this trip? Seeing Budapest at night from a boat on the river, with a drink in hand. I was a little surprised there were no seats on the boat, as it was a 2 hour cruise, so that was a little negative. But there were a couple of crates to sit on, and we were lucky to get that after having checked out the view. I was positively surprised by something else though; the music, in my opinion it was great. Watching a great view, listening to the good old 90's/00's hits while sipping wine, now that's a good time.
The boat has a free cloak room too, but seeing as we wanted to head up on deck from time to time we didn't use it. After the cruise we were headed to a nightclub, free entry with the cruise. There were a few negatives around this though. They didn't tell us it was a 15-20 minutes walk until after they had closed the toilets on the boat, which meant we had to stop by somewhere to go to the toilet on the way. We got the name of the club from someone after about 10 minutes so we could run in somewhere and catch up after. When we got to the club they told us to go next door, but here we met one of the guides from the boat and she got us in, I have no idea why the bouncers said no at first. The club was alright but not great, and you had to tip before going in if you wanted toilet paper, one of the strangest things I've ever encountered. So we had some negatives this night, but all in all we still had a good night, and ordered pizza on our way out of the nightclub. So, to sum up. We had a good trip and we quite like Budapest, but I won't go so far as to say it's my favourite city. The city has some great buildings and I would love to explore more and I wish I had time for a visit to a Turkish bath. And Budapest looks absolutely lovely from the river at night. The ruinbars aren't really my thing, for the most part, but some are better than others. Hope you enjoyed reading and maybe got a little bit of the Christmas feeling we felt there through the pictures.
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