Christmas Markets in Budapest

Ah, Budapest.......... city of culture, architecture, bloodshed, history and er, dentistry??? It's something of a tradition that we always take a romantic winter city break, exploring a European Christmas market, doing a little shopping, and most importantly, drinking mulled wine and eating some form of unidentifiable fried snack.



This year I decided on Budapest, having found a very good deal on the internet which included flights and bed and breakfast at the four-star Hotel Gellert, perched right on the banks of the Danube. Built in 1918, it is known as the grand-dame of the city, a triumph of Art Nouveau with beautiful stonework, stained glass, glittering lights, and most importantly, a coffee shop that does the most amazing sachertorte.

The other great draw of the Gellert is its famous spa. The city is sited over more than one hundred thermal springs, and waters from these are pumped up from below ground to a number of spas on both sides of the river. Their healing properties have been known and utilised for the last 2000 years; the Romans founded their settlement Aquincum here, referring to the waters, and some of the spas built by the Turkish occupiers of the city in the 16th and 17th centuries are still in use. The Gellert is one of the grandest, with fabulous mosaics, treatment rooms and thirteen pools and baths.

We didn't have to leave the front door of the hotel to enter the Gellert spa, however; bathrobes were provided in our room, so we clambered into our swimstuff and robes and padded along the corridor to the ancient spa lift.






This is provided solely for the use of the hotel guests, its sliding metal grilles manipulated by smiling old ladies who seem to have been employed on the basis of the shorter their stature, the less room they take up in the tiny lift.

We nodded and smiled a lot, they nodded and smiled a lot, we both exhausted our four words of Hungarian then looked politely at the ceiling. The lift ground down into the bowels of the spa, depositing us at a turnstile for guests; another was provided for vistors, as apparently doctors prescribe treatments for their patients here, who can have everything from the relaxing (a mud wrap) to the frankly terrifying-sounding (electrotherapy treatment) or even a gum jet massage in the calcified waters, whatever that is.

Thought I'd rather have a hot chocolate in the atrium instead. Whilst wandering the various floors and investigating the different treatments on offer, we spotted a sign depicting a giant tooth. How intriguing, we thought, especially as even as we walked around lumps of enamel were dropping off my beloved's poorly maintained fangs.

Back in the UK he'd been quoted about four grand to fix his teeth (think of that head orc from The Lord of the Rings and you'd be fairly close to the mark...), so without even making an appointment he was shown into the dentist's chair, given a reassuring Magyar smile by a very pretty dentist and told to open wide....

Poor girl went white with fear and called in the practice manager. Who also went white and got out a pencil and notebook and started making a long and involved list of urgent work, (the dental equivalent of resurfacing junctions 8-14 of the M1). Three days and fifteen hours of dental work later he now has a smile of average beauty; no Tippexed Hollywood rictus here, just nice, clean and much more, ahem, solid teeth.

And of course, the real beauty is in the price and the charming service. The hotel and flights cost around £450 for the two of us, then for the dental work, (consisting of one root canal, two crowns, three standard fillings and four cosmetic ones), about £750. It wasn't quite the romantic break I'd been expecting, but while I was waiting I did read three novels, have some wonderful walks around the city and loll about in the mineral water of the spa like a small pregnant whale.

And the Christmas market? Lovely, one of the better ones I reckon, the quality of the crafts was far superior to many of the others, and the mulled wine was delicious. Sadly my husband was unable to partake of any of the sausages, pastries or other delicacies on offer as he was on a ration of soup for a couple of days..........