Festival Capital, Venice of East Europe, confluence of cultures spanning Turkey, Austria, Germany and Russia given the influence they had over Hungary all the way till 1990 when it finally became a democracy, Budapest is a fascinating city to visit.
More than anything else though, it houses one of Sachin George Sebastian’s art works, and it was truly a pride to see it in the main lobby next to the elevators of the Kempinski Hotel which is located at pretty much the epicentre of Budapest.
One of the main reasons to visit Budapest though was to catch the impressive
Game of Thrones musical by Ramin Djawadi (Video link)
The concert was absolutely phenomenal, playing excerpts from the show on the video screen behind, while the orchestra performed the same background score live.
Ramin himself is amazingly talented, playing instruments like the electric guitar and piano himself while not conducting the orchestra. His piece on the blowing up of the Sept of Baelor was incredible, while the overall performance for Red Wedding and Rise of the Mother of Dragons was really nostalgic.
Hungary is part of Schengen countries, making it easy to enter, but currency stuck with Forintz and lack of Ubers still make it a regressive place to visit.
Forintz converts roughly €1 to 300HUF making you deal with a lot of zeroes that can be confusing. I myself withdrew €500 worth of HUF instead of €50 while trying to pull out cash from the airports ATM for cab fare.
However, Budapest is still expensive for tourists, and the entire money got spent out over the next 3 days there.
One of the top things to do is the city tour with the Free Walking Tour guys, but we were a little disappointed in the content as we probably expected Budapest to have a lot more history.
It had also started to rain in spite of the forecast promising clear skies.
Tip: Always prepare for the rain in Budapest as the weather and its forecasting is circumspect.
We were therefore running between the Budapest Eye, Micheal Jackson’s chapel and the worlds most scenic tram along the Danube on the Pest side, and the Parliament House, Cathedral and Mathias church on the Buda side, which you see after crossing the very scenic Chain bridge that connects the East (Pest) and West (Buda) settlements of the Danube.
The ruin bar tour with the same Agency turned out a lot more fun and highly recommended as this is truly the place where you party till the sun comes up.
Szimpla is the first and most popular ruin bar, but the tour doesn’t cover this since there isn’t a dearth of fame and crowd for this place, and more importantly, don’t give the welcome shots the other places give.
The places that do get covered are Elatohaz and Elato Kerk, the second and third ruin bars of Budapest after Szimpla, which apart from just the history, is also popular for serving the famous “Pinky” shot made with the popular Hungarian drink Palinka, and houses the Elato Taqueria, where I had the best nachos of my life.
The last ruin bar of the tour is Instant Foggas. This is a multi storied dance club where we lost the group we started the tour and became decent friends with by this time, in seconds. We were left with just one Israeli couple who I tried a dance face off with and lost miserably.
After a night of partying, almost as if orchestrated on purpose, Budapest offers a host of thermal baths from the Turkish era, to soak yourselves and relax in.
We visited Szecheni Spa, the largest and most popular of the lot, which is a labyrinth of hot spas, cold spas, indoor pools, outdoor pools, medicinals spas, saunas, giving you enough to do for an entire day.
The last of the big ticket items to do after city walk, ruin bars and thermal baths is a cruise on the ricer Danube. This was one thing we skipped after over staying in the spa and given it was a little too pricey, so it was compensated with a simple walk along the Danube that was also quite picturesque.
Along with these host of activities that can keep one quite occupied for 2-3 days, there are tons of cool pubs, restaurants, street food stores, caravan food stores and even cafes to visit and have dishes like Langush, Goulash and Paprikash, topped with the Palinka (a drink known to be a local remedy for all types of diseases) and a host of wines Hungary is known for, which we tried out at these spots:
Ruin Bars:
Szimpla Kert
ELLATOhaz
Ellato Kert
Racskert
Fine Dining:
Ket Szerecsen
Aszu Restaurant
Cafe:
New York Cafe
Fast Eats:
Zing Burger Kiraly 60
Incognito
Ellatokert Taqueria
More than anything else though, it houses one of Sachin George Sebastian’s art works, and it was truly a pride to see it in the main lobby next to the elevators of the Kempinski Hotel which is located at pretty much the epicentre of Budapest.
One of the main reasons to visit Budapest though was to catch the impressive
Game of Thrones musical by Ramin Djawadi (Video link)
The concert was absolutely phenomenal, playing excerpts from the show on the video screen behind, while the orchestra performed the same background score live.
Ramin himself is amazingly talented, playing instruments like the electric guitar and piano himself while not conducting the orchestra. His piece on the blowing up of the Sept of Baelor was incredible, while the overall performance for Red Wedding and Rise of the Mother of Dragons was really nostalgic.
Hungary is part of Schengen countries, making it easy to enter, but currency stuck with Forintz and lack of Ubers still make it a regressive place to visit.
Forintz converts roughly €1 to 300HUF making you deal with a lot of zeroes that can be confusing. I myself withdrew €500 worth of HUF instead of €50 while trying to pull out cash from the airports ATM for cab fare.
However, Budapest is still expensive for tourists, and the entire money got spent out over the next 3 days there.
One of the top things to do is the city tour with the Free Walking Tour guys, but we were a little disappointed in the content as we probably expected Budapest to have a lot more history.
It had also started to rain in spite of the forecast promising clear skies.
Tip: Always prepare for the rain in Budapest as the weather and its forecasting is circumspect.
We were therefore running between the Budapest Eye, Micheal Jackson’s chapel and the worlds most scenic tram along the Danube on the Pest side, and the Parliament House, Cathedral and Mathias church on the Buda side, which you see after crossing the very scenic Chain bridge that connects the East (Pest) and West (Buda) settlements of the Danube.
The ruin bar tour with the same Agency turned out a lot more fun and highly recommended as this is truly the place where you party till the sun comes up.
Szimpla is the first and most popular ruin bar, but the tour doesn’t cover this since there isn’t a dearth of fame and crowd for this place, and more importantly, don’t give the welcome shots the other places give.
The places that do get covered are Elatohaz and Elato Kerk, the second and third ruin bars of Budapest after Szimpla, which apart from just the history, is also popular for serving the famous “Pinky” shot made with the popular Hungarian drink Palinka, and houses the Elato Taqueria, where I had the best nachos of my life.
The last ruin bar of the tour is Instant Foggas. This is a multi storied dance club where we lost the group we started the tour and became decent friends with by this time, in seconds. We were left with just one Israeli couple who I tried a dance face off with and lost miserably.
After a night of partying, almost as if orchestrated on purpose, Budapest offers a host of thermal baths from the Turkish era, to soak yourselves and relax in.
We visited Szecheni Spa, the largest and most popular of the lot, which is a labyrinth of hot spas, cold spas, indoor pools, outdoor pools, medicinals spas, saunas, giving you enough to do for an entire day.
The last of the big ticket items to do after city walk, ruin bars and thermal baths is a cruise on the ricer Danube. This was one thing we skipped after over staying in the spa and given it was a little too pricey, so it was compensated with a simple walk along the Danube that was also quite picturesque.
Along with these host of activities that can keep one quite occupied for 2-3 days, there are tons of cool pubs, restaurants, street food stores, caravan food stores and even cafes to visit and have dishes like Langush, Goulash and Paprikash, topped with the Palinka (a drink known to be a local remedy for all types of diseases) and a host of wines Hungary is known for, which we tried out at these spots:
Ruin Bars:
Szimpla Kert
ELLATOhaz
Ellato Kert
Racskert
Ket Szerecsen
Aszu Restaurant
Cafe:
New York Cafe
Fast Eats:
Zing Burger Kiraly 60
Incognito
Ellatokert Taqueria
No comments:
Post a Comment