We arrived in Budapest Wednesday around noon, after a little..delay departing from Luton airport. After quickly dropping off our stuff at the hostel we started walking along the Danube river since it was a beautiful 80 degrees outside. On the west side of the river was hilly Buda and on the east side of the river was flat Pest. We walked a big circle around Pest and down Andrassy Avenue to see the main sights including the Chain Bridge, St. Stephen’s Basilica, Parliament, The House of Terror, the Opera House, and Heroes’ Square. Budapest architecture is an interesting mix of styles and influences, we passed everything from Roman to Gothic.
We stopped at the House of Terror, a museum made in the honor of those affected by the rule of fascist and communist regimes in Hungary in the actual building that both parties headquartered. It was extremely well done and pretty depressing. But I did learn a lot about the history of Hungary, a country I admit I know very little about, and it made everything we saw have much more context.
Our first night, after dinner at a restaurant that had traditional Hungarian food, we made friends with some Australians while pre-gaming at our hostel. Our new bestie Carl led the way on a pub crawl to bars nearby with a map marked up with dot destinations. We followed the dots to the most unique, incredible bars I have ever been to.
Budapest Nightlife, Part 1
First of all, there is no street full of bars or even area of bars in Budapest. We quickly discovered that from the outside the best places look like the worst, or not even a bar at all.
Bar 1:
The first stop was a bar made from what looked like an abandoned warehouse. Once through a few rooms the place opened up to the outside with a bar on one side and large tables and other seating to the right. The seating included benches, a pommel horse, old bathtubs turned into couches, and a Red Bull car converted into a loveseat. Throughout the place there were also big torches of fire on the ground. A huge canopy hung over part of the roof. Needless to say we were not expecting this from the dingy black opening guarded by large men in leather jackets. We sat and talked for a while with the Aussies, a Brazilian, and a Swedish girl (bringing the Swedish population of the bar to 1.5! haha).
Bar 2:
This bar looked like the sketchiest place I had ever seen from the outside. The entrance was cement steps leading down into a small room with graffiti covered walls. The group went to the back room to sit, which was a huge cement room with low walls-totally batman's cave.
Bar/club 3:
We had given up on finding the last dot on our map and were about to buy a kebab when someone realized that the large, unmarked metal doors were actually our destination. Once inside we walked up five flights of metal stairs that opened up to a dark bar with red lights. Up another flight of stairs we find ourselves on a huge rooftop with tons of chairs and a big bar in the corner. We heard that the very dedicated partyers stay on the roof to watch the sunrise. After some time on the rooftop we went downstairs and cut through the coat check to the dance floor. We ended the night with a kebab (a special vegetarian one for me) and found our way all the way back to our hostel around 5 am.
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