Budapest: Travel Guide à la Teeny Part III

Get a map and walk around on all the little streets in Pest- when looking at the map head for the really tangled up ones, they’re the best.




The metro is nice and comes often but doesn’t connect up that well. It’s better if you are just talking one line a long distance than if you are trying to change lines a whole bunch. The ticket machines are in English. There are also trams that run all over the city- but we weren't quite sure how to figure them out. If you do- props to you! Please feel free to post a comment to this blog!



Margaret Island is big, green and lovely in the Danube river between Buda and Pest. A great place for a picnic or just a nap in the sun. Definitely worth a visit!

If you are in the market for a guidebook, we really liked Visible Cities: Budapest by Annabel Barber and Emma Poper-Evans.

Also: if you are arriving from the airport and you are in a group of two or more people, take Zona Taxi!! They accept euros and Hungarian forints (March 2007: one euro is 250 forints) and there is a fixed price, which for two people is the same as taking the shuttle bus! It is a total bargain! We also called the day before we left and made a reservation and they came and picked us up at 5am at our apartment and took us to the airport. Note: You pay a bit less if you pay in forints.

I hope this helps you and I hope you have a great trip!!

Things I Like About Life Here: PART 2

In February I posted an entry about things I like about life in Paris. I think it is high time that I post the sequel to that entry.

Tax and Tip Included:
In restaurants the tip and tax is already included into the price printed on the menu. Duh! Why on earth don’t we do that in the United States? If I walk past a restaurant and see the menu offering a burger and fires for 8.25 and I have exactly 8.25 in my pocket…I’m in! In the US if you see 8.25 for a burger and fries, you can’t go in and eat that burger unless you have at least $10 in your pocket (15% tip and 7% tax on 8.25 equals approximately $10.08). Here the restaurant pays the servers instead of leaving the severs at the mercy of the tip. If the restaurant is nice here or the service is particularly good or it’s a place you go to often, people still sometimes leave a tip of up to a euro or two. But the gesture is a way of showing your appreciation instead of something that is required.

“Bon Courage!”
Bon courage literally means ‘Good courage’ and it is a common thing to say when parting ways with someone. I really like it! It’s a way of saying, ‘Hey, fight the good fight. Hang in there. Be brave even though we all know life is hard.’

Espresso in the Morning:
I usually have a little espresso in the morning before I leave home. But there is a great morning tradition, which I sometimes take part in and that is to go down the café (which are literally on every street so it’s not hard to find one) and stand at the counter and drink your little espresso elbow to elbow with the other people doing the same. You can scan the paper or chat with the bartender or just collect your thoughts for the day. There might be some bar stools to perch on, but most people stand. The price for a coffee that is had at the counter is considerably cheaper than if you order the same cup of coffee but drink it at a table. I love the camaraderie of it all and I get to hear many well wishings of “Bonne journée! Bon courage!!”

The Crazy French Language:
I think French is a beautiful language. It’s hard to imagine that only a couple years ago I really couldn’t speak it at all and now I’m fluent. That’s not to say I don’t make mistakes! But I can live my life easily in French now. I think two of the big reasons that I learned so quickly are 1) I learned it HERE and was immersed in it and 2) I accepted the language as it came to me without always trying to translate things back into English. Still, I have recently learned two knew vocabulary words that I think are soooo funny when translated directly back into English. The first is ‘zipper’, which is called ‘une fermeture éclair’ or ‘a lightening closer’. Even better, to signal to someone that their fly is unzipped you have to say ‘ta fermeture éclair est descendue’ or literally ‘your lightening closer is descended.’ Ha! The other one I recently learned was the word for when you wake up in the morning and you have ‘sleep’ in your eyes. In French you have ‘caca d’oeil’ or literally ‘eye poop!’ Oh, those Frenchies!

BUDAPEST- Travel Guide à la Teeny PART II

In the second instalment of the Budapest Travel Guide à la Teeny I will share with you some bars and restaurants that we really liked.

Food is pretty good and very cheap. Paprika is the ‘Hungarian’ spice so you will see a lot of that and Goulash soup is a good and well known Hungarian dish. Some restaurants that we liked were all in one neighbourhood in the 7th district of Pest.

“M” is at 48 Kertesz utca. Everything inside is covered with brown packaging paper and the menu changes every week. The food is good and not expensive and you can try Unicum which is a strong Hungarian drink- it sort of tastes like fermented flowers. Definitely worth a shot! (pun intended)

Dupla is just next door also at 48 Kertesz utca. We had each had a beer, a main course and a side dish and the total for the two of us was 12 euros. WHOA! Both of these restaurants are small, chill, and funky. I recommend them both!

There are a whole bunch of restaurants and bars along the Liszt ter (Liszt square). The square is only for pedestrians and they all have terraces with heat lamps and they offer you polar fleece blankets to snuggle up with at your table. Very cool! The square and the other two restaurants are all located near metro Oktogon on metro line 1.

A GREAT BAR: Szimpla Kert. This is a really cool and I am pretty sure clandestine bar. I don’t want to talk it up too much but it is one of the coolest bar’s I’ve ever been to.

You have to go in through a little passage that has plastic flaps hanging over it and from the outside it just looks like an apartment building. There is a yellow sign outside though and you can just go on in. It is located on Kazinczy utca between Wesselenyi utca and Dohany utca.

Szimpla Kert is also in the 7th district and not so far from the restaurants above and near metro Astoria on line 2. Szimpla Kert is really chill, very big, kind of falling apart, you sort of feel like you are in some kind of elaborate squat, there are arm chairs and sofas which definitely seem to have been rescued from the street, the music is good but not so loud that you can’t easily chat, drinks are cheap and good. What more could you ask for???

BUDAPEST- Travel Guide à la Teeny

So, I love to travel and almost as much as I love to travel, I love to help other people travel. At the end of March, Bruno and I went for a long weekend in Budapest and I'd like to dedicate a couple blog posts to the trip.

Here is installment one:

Budapest is a great place to visit and still relatively unknown by the masses of American tourists. It has taken a huge jump up in popularity over the last five years and I think the Hungarian people might feel a little bit like they are being invaded, so don’t be alarmed if not every waiter in every bar is thrilled that you are there. But not to worry, the people are generally really nice, and if not nice, they just leave you alone (they aren’t mean or anything). And the city is AMAZING!

Budapest is actually two cities: Buda and Pest. They are divided by the Danube river. On the Buda side is the Buda castle which is worth a visit and there is a great view of Pest from there. The rest of the time we pretty much hung out exclusively in Pest which is more lively and funky.

THE BATHS. Budapest is known for its wealth of natural hot spring baths. You can save money by bringing your own towel and not renting one there. If you are with a boyfriend/close friend/sibling etc. you can also save money by sharing a little dressing room. You lock your stuff inside afterward.

Indoor bath – the Gellert Bath in the Gellert hotel is well known. It is on the Buda (hill side) of the city just on your left as you cross the Szabadsag hid. bridge. There is a hot pool and cool swimming pool and then if you venture back and off to the right you can go though to a sauna and another steam bath area. It's not that well marked so there aren’t as many tourists in this part, because they don’t know it is there. When I say back to the right, if you are at the hot pool, facing the swimming pool it is accessible through a door in the back right corner.

Open-air Baths- our favorite was Szechenzyi bath which is really big and beautiful.

There is one hot pool, one really hot pool and a cool swimming pool all in a big courtyard. You can go in any season and it’s neat in cold weather because you can see all the steam coming off the water. And it's actually pretty funny to jump out of 104 degree water and go running (and in my case squealing) to the other pool. One of the pools is famous for the old Hungarian men who stay in the pool for hours playing chess.

Both of the hot pools have jets and sprayers. Some of the jets go in cycles, so for ten minutes there is one feature going and then another feature. The jets come on and off in different parts of the pools so it's not like there is only one good spot to be in the pool. The hot pool without the chess players has a really fun circular part in it with a really strong current that whooshes you around- it is really fun!

This bath is located in Heros Square park and there is a metro station right at it on the line one called Szechenzyi Furdo (furdo means bath in Hungarian).

We also went to the much smaller and very un-touristy Lukacs bath. Nobody really speaks English here! This one also has a circular pool with a current and a sauna. This one is neat but I wouldn’t go here first because it’s better if you understand the system a little bit. Here there are communal dressing rooms (men and women separate though) and you have to have a swim cap or else rent one there! This is located in Buda at 25-29 Frankel Leo utca (street) north of Batthyany ter metro on line 2.

All of these baths are mixed, men and women and you have to wear a swimsuit. They all have a deal where if you stay less than 2 hours that you can get some of your money back. The three here are listed in order most expensive to least expensive with Gellert around 12euros per person and Lukacs around 5 euros.