Four days spent in the heart of Hungary on our loveholidays and InterContinental Hotel fact-finding mission and the verdict… Budapest you’ll be the ruin of me.
We are back where we started our first night, Szimpla Kert ruin bar, and if the mood tonight is yoga mat sleepy then so are we.
On account of our red eye back to Edinburgh.
Szimpla Kert is the granddaddy of romkocsmas, or ‘simple gardens’.
Repurposed shabby chic spaces and cellars rescued after the Cold War.
Alley cats
Szimpla is more of an alleyway of social life and interaction.
Bars, concert spaces, eateries, art spaces, a library, a farmers and bicycle flea market.
Although on quieter days at the start of the week, its core business, the serving of drinks, does demand patience of a tourist.
Which means my little wine drinker is directed to The Wine Bar snug because none of the other dozen bars sell rosé.
A sign above the bar reads ‘Back in ten minutes’ which we learn is a ‘Hungarian ten minutes’, akin to Caribbean island time.
Not that we’d deny the barkeeps their quiet time seeing first hand the throngs who pass through on weekend nights.
When we catch an ambient singer and a standards foot-stomper banging out Adele and Florence Welch on International Women’s Day.
The hideaways
For first-timers of whom we count ourselves in the number the search for new adopted Hungarian beers stretches beyond Szimpla.
To a ruin bar whose front challengingly is described as being hidden behind foliage.
Now if your billet is on the Danube front you’ll be asked to build up a thirst with a half-hour walk to Potkulcs.
But to make your time work for you perhaps visit the House of Terror, the fascists and communists’ torture hub, on your way.
On a balmy night you may want to sup your Soproni IPA which comes in cheaper than the Szimpla hot spot.
But we’d recommend you to enjoy the interior and the clutter of artefacts and graffiti art inside… and the local characters.
You snooze you loos
For a ruin bar meets Paris cafe culture and it is a cafe serving breakfasts or brunches by day, we follow the Danube.
Left of our InterCon hotel. and hang another left to the Csendes Letterem.
Where we nibble on olives and tortilla chips and fill our bellies and bladders before, of course, nature calls.
Now it is part of the adventure and the mischief of ruin bar owners to funk up their loo doors and interiors.
And the Csendes Letterem proudly boasts of its success in stumping customers who end up asking where the rest rooms are?
And of course it doesn’t take much to dupe me but I’m game.
Even if Budapest you’ll be the ruin of me.
Meet you on the ut
We’ve been spending four days in the Hungarian capital with loveholidays, staying in the Danube front InterContinental (£1,099 for two).
I’ve been keeping you updated between goulash, Soproni IPA, hot chocolate and Chimney Cake, history and baths on our progress.
And I’ll put it all together in a review when I shake off the red eye but meantime.
MEET YOU ON THE UT
