Restaurant Review: Spoon

We wanted our last dinner in Budapest to be really special, so we opted for a highly recommended restaurant called Spoon. Spoon is a boat restaurant resting on the Danube River, along the Pest side of the city, with great views of Castle Hill. The service was phenomenal! The staff was super friendly and had great recommendations regarding the menu. They had a live piano player filling the room with live contemporary and jazz. Ankita even got an ottoman for her purse so that she didn’t have to leave it on the ground! And of course, the food was incredible. Continue reading →

Trekking Through Hungarian Caves

There are countless caves hidden within the hills of Buda. To put it into perspective, Budapest is known for one of the most concentrated areas in the world to find natural caves–there are almost 100 in the greater Budapest area. Most are located under residential districts, and many were even utilized during war as hospital corridors or escape routes. The first cave we explored in Hungary was the Szemlőhegyi Cave. Continue reading →

The Széchenyi Baths

We finally got to the The Széchenyi Baths after an entire day of perusing through the city’s outdoor sights. Needless to say, we were freezing and welcomed the sight of the baths with open arms. At first we got a little lost when looking for the spa, and when we finally found the building, I thought we were still lost and had mistaken a government building for the spa! It was so ornate and beautiful. Continue reading →

St. Stephen’s Basilica

We began exploring the “Pest” side of Budapest with St. Stephen’s Basilica. It has become one of my favorite cathedrals from all of those I have seen in Europe! It was built in honor of King Stephen I, the first king of Hungary. One of the main attributes of the church is St. Stephen’s mummified right hand (Szent Jobb), which sits in an ornate glass case, and can be lit up if you insert 200Ft (It’s recommended to put in the coins since you can barely see the hand without the lighting. I think they do this on purpose..sneaky). It took almost 50 years to build the cathedral because at one point, the dome collapsed, which required that the entire church be torn down and rebuilt from the foundation up. After it was rebuilt, it was deemed sturdy enough that the Hungarians stored important documents, artifacts, and other national treasures in the church during the WWII bombings. Continue reading →

Restaurant Review: Stex Ház

January 25th was quite a hectic day. By 6:00PM, our E-4 program had finished our 7th and last final exam of the semester. As soon as we busted through the doors of ICADE, Will, Ankita, Liz, and I hailed a cab to the airport so we could catch our 7:30PM flight to Budapest. It was a time crunch, but we managed to make it on time. By the time we got to Budapest and had settled into our hotel, it was super late, and we were starving. We had gotten so used to late Spanish dinners and restaurants/bars staying open past midnight that we almost forgot that the majority of Europe is on the contrary. Determined not to settle for kebabs or McDonalds, we walked blocks upon blocks in the freezing cold, and fatefully came across a great restaurant called Stex! Continue reading →