My personal guide to Budapest: what to eat and what to do

Four days in one city with six people and one Chihuahua sharing one apartment is an equation waiting go to wrong. Except it didn’t…

So, as previously mentioned, me and five of my closest friends here went to Budapest last week for about 4 days. We left Friedrichshafen at around 6:30pm and drove about 9 hours, all the way to Hungary.  At around 3:30am we arrived at our Airbnb ,which was located right in the city center of the “Pest” side (the city is divided into “Buda”, on the left side of the Danube River, and “Pest”, on the right-hand side). Wanting nothing more than to sleep, Kevin and I first had to figure out the (not so) complex parking system on our street, which, to our very luck, was only explained in Hungarian. After a good 45 minutes of google translate and some questionable research, we found out the parking would be free for all the four days we’d be there. Knowing our creepy-looking, 9-seat Van would be safe for the next four days, we eventually went to bed at around 5 am.

Day 1: Sightseeing like a proper tourist, pub crawls and a whole lot of food

On the first day I insisted we’d do the most touristy thing you can think of: the Hop On Hop Off bus. This was the best way to see both sides of the city whilst getting a bit of information about Budapest (even though I’ve got to admit: I do not remember a single thing). We saw the Hungarian Parliament, went to the Buda Castle and all that is nearby it (the Funicular and Fisherman’s Bastion). All well worth seeing!

 

From a list of restaurants I had previously put toghether, we ended up going to Smokey Monkey Bar-BQ first. This was supposed to be a fast-food kinda place with loooads of meat (ya girl likes her meats). However, it unfortunately was only that. Other than a rather sad-looking sandwich with tonnes of meat and a bit of coleslaw, there’s not much you can eat there. For us, specially, accompanied by our darling gluten intolerant Philip, it was sad to see how limited he was in terms of options. I can’t say I’d go back there, to be honest.

On that night I also signed us up for a pub crawl with Pub Crawl Nation Budapest. I’ll start off by saying that the pub crawl itself was very disappointing. You are promised 9 drinks, 5 drinking games, 4 bars and one club within one night. Well, we did go to one club and it all took place within one night, but the 5 drinks we got in 3 bars and the one lousy round of beer pong we played really left room for improvement. The club, however, let me tell you! This one club is made up of 3 floors, each with about 4 different rooms that are playing different types of music for all kinds of tastes. And…wait for it… there’s a pizza place INSIDE THE CLUB! I would definitely recommend Fogas for a night out.

What I also noticed about Budapest, is that there are a gazillion bars and clubs within one street, each one more beautiful than the one before and there are sooo many places to eat in between those clubs. Pizza, Döner, Langos (fried dough, shredded cheese and sour cream plus any topping you choose to add), you name it. Sometimes even open until 6am. And this was on a holiday where everything was supposed to be closed.

 

Day 2: Mazel Tov, the Citadel, a boat cruise on the Danube River and vegan males

Day 2 started with all of us sleeping until midday, after having gone out the night before. The only reason we did leave bed at the time we did (or even at all), was food. Following a recommendation of two Hungarians which are part of my family, we booked ourselves a table at Mazel Tov, an amazing restaurant that combines Middle Eastern food and ruin bars, making it a great spot for lunch or dinner.  I’m not gonna lie, when I saw the place from outside I thought 2 things: “What the hell is this?” and “Isn’t this literally where I went out last night?” Exactly! This beautiful restaurant, which looks like an absolute shit-hole from outside, is right next to Fogas, the club we had been to the night before. I absolutely recommend you try this place if you ever go to Budapest and either like hummus, falafel, meat or pita-bread.

Now to the food we had:

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After eating all the calories you’d need for a day, we decided to go to the river and take a boat to Margaret Island. Maybe destiny didn’t want me to go there or maybe we were just a group of young, unorganised people, but we didn’t make it to any of the rides. At the end, we took a cruise around the river with someone telling us what the different buildings along the river were and the history behind them, which is another thing of my trip that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend.

Before the tour, however, we went up the path that leads to the Citadel on the Buda side of town. That I can recommend. From the top and even on your way up there you have beautiful views of the city at night.

A little side story to the missed boat rides to Margaret Island: after missing the boat at 4:30pm and not being able to get into the next two after that, we quickly went to the Hard Rock Café not far from the dock, for two people to buy some t-shirts. To the annoyance of the male half of our group, us girls were approached by this vegan guy, who was organising a protest against animal slaughter (by protest I mean 7 people standing in a circle, wearing masks like the hacker group Anonymous and holding laptops that show scenes of animals being slaughtered). We had a really good conversation with him about meat consumption, the necessity (or not) of eating meat, etc. This, however, almost caused us to miss the fourth boat that evening, leading to us being ignored by the guys for a good half an hour (it seems that for them, the most offensive part of it all, was that the guy who approached us was vegan?).

That night we also went to a ruin bar, Szimpla Kert, which is super touristy but very nice. You get some lovely LED lights and plants hanging around everywhere. What I can’t recommend is the food market right next to it, the Street Food Karavan. Although it was the first place that had an all-vegan place to eat (this only brought up the issue from earlier that day), it was terrible in terms of options and I paid a fortune for the most basic Langos, which just tasted so bad, even though I was rather tipsy and my standards for food were quite low at the time.

Day 3: Gluten free Bakery, selfies on the road, the Great Market Hall and Széchenyi Thermal Bath

Day 3 was our designated chill day (yes, you need to define these things). We woke up and Philip and I went all the way to Free Bakery, where you can find tonnes of delicious pastries and cakes, all gluten-free. Budapest in general seems to have quite a few places for gluten intolerant people, such as the restaurant Drop, that only serves gluten-free food.

After a failed attempt on going to the Frida Kahlo exhibition in the National Gallery (the queue was so long, we wouldn’t have made it in time), we decided to take some pictures… right on the road.

For lunch we went to the Great Market Hall, a touristy food market that seemed to be mentioned in most “What to do in Budapest” websites. Let me tell you now: there’s a lot of things you should do in Budapest. Going to this market is not one of them.

Even though the food did look delicious (as you will see in the pictures below), most food stalls didn’t have any pictures of the foods next to the names. This means that we just saw loads of interesting looking food and had no idea what it was or how to order it. It was also super busy and people were walking past you constantly, not making it a comfortable place to eat (which we didn’t; we went to the little park opposite the market).

 

After digesting the ridiculous amount of food we had consumed that day, we made our way to the Városliget Park on the far right of the Pest side. This was also the first time we used the underground in Budapest, which, even if you don’t take the underground, is totally worth seeing, simply because of how beautiful it is. Once there, we made our way to the Széchenyi Thermal Bath, which, as the name suggests, is a bunch of thermal swimming pools (both outside and inside) as well as different types of saunas. They also have a Spa there, where you can get a massage and even something called a Beer Spa (whatever that entails). Even though this is one of the most touristy things to do in Budapest and might therefore sounds unappealing to some people, I would definitely recommend going there. Specially at night, when it’s already dark outside, the outside baths look beautiful when the old building is lit up.

Day 4: Dohány Street Synagogue, brunching and going home

On our last day in Budapest, we decided to go for a walk around the city and see the Dohány Street Synagogue, located right in the Jewish neighbourhood of Budapest. I did have a few restaurants/cafés I wanted to try there, such as Café Noé, a Jewish pastry shop, and the Rosenstein restaurant, but didn’t have the time to.  Maybe the next culinarily curious person there can go and try those for me. I must admit, I wish I had spent more time in the Jewish neighbourhood and done some more exploring, because it did look super interesting.

The lovely walk past the Synagogue and the National Museum ended with us having some lovely brunch at Cafe Brunch Budapest to end the trip on a high note.