Budapest, 3rd CITY GUIDE

by Phillips, Adrian; Scotchmer, Jo

• ISBN13: 9781841623887
• ISBN10: 1841623881
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-06-19
• Publisher: Bradt Travel Guides

Summary

Budapest has it all: spectacular architecture, award-winning cultural festivals, Michelin-starred restaurants, historic thermal baths, and business-friendly hotels. The authors are winners of the British Guild of Travel Writers Best Guidebook Award and share their enthusiasm for the city in an engaging and witty style. Thoroughly updated, the third edition of Budapest is packed with up-to-the-minute information on hotels, caf s, bars and restaurants, as well as new walks. It provides travellers with all they need on where to stay, eat and drink, and what to see and do.

Author Biography

Adrian Phillips is Publishing Director at Bradt Travel Guides; he is the author of several guidebooks including Bradt’s Hungary and writes regularly for newspapers and magazines. Jo Scotchmer is a public-relations director; she has also contributed to a number of national magazines.

Table of Contents

Contexts. Planning. Practicalities. Local Transport. Accommodation. Eating and drinking. Entertainment & Nightlife. Shopping. Baths & sport. Exploring Buda. Exploring Pest & the Islands. Museums & More. Natural Budapest. Beyond the City. Language. Further information.

Excerpts

Our first view of Budapest was through shaking fingers, slumped greenly in the back of an airport taxi driven by a man resolute in his commitment to overtaking on blind corners. The southern approach to the city was unpretty, characterised by blurred advertising boards and blaring car horns. We stumbled out of the car and into a restaurant, playing diners’ roulette with a Hungarian-language menu, and settling our stomachs with glasses of Bull’s Blood and plates of what we later learned were cockerels’ testicles. Almost inevitably, the tatty hotel’s cheerless manager had no record of our booking, and indicated as much by shrugging his shoulders and picking his ear.

But romantics know that love can blossom from unpromising first meetings. As we trudged off to find a bed for the night, a yellow tram rumbled and screeched beside us. We passed a faded 19th-century mansion, and peeked through its broad archway to a wooden-cobbled passage and a pretty garden courtyard. We turned a corner and crossed a woman taking her Hungarianpulifor its evening walk, a dreadlocked dog that looked more mat than mutt. And then we reached the river, with the palace lording it on the opposite bank and illuminated bridges casting white lights upon the surface. It has been said that Hungary ‘grows on you and seems to squirt a divine soda water into your blood’. In that moment by the Danube, our hearts were caught, and the city only tightened its grip as the days passed.