Quietude need not be fleeting in Budapest if you incorporate soulful green spots into the itinerary. Along with gawking at St. Stephen’s Basilica, shooting bitter Unicum liqueur at the iconic Szimpla Kert ruin pub, and devouring stuffed peppers at Café Kör, consider Kopaszi-gát (Kopaszi Dam) in South Buda, a 10-acre recreational development that evokes a carefree boardwalk. Eszter Farkas, a local mindfulness meditation and yoga instructor, enjoys walking across the promenade, past the couples and families headed to bars and restaurants, all the way to the end, which, surrounded by the river, feels like a little island in itself.
Farkas is revitalized by the river, especially on select summer weekends when the Liberty Bridge is reimagined as a pedestrian-only zone—where Farkas teaches yoga classes. She likes to lie down on the grass or sit under a willow tree and gaze at the Danube, or to close her eyes and meditate. You can “hear the sounds of the city and feel the Danube flowing underneath,” she says. “Even without [seeing] the blossoming flowers, one can enjoy the serenity.”
Courtesy Four Seasons Gresham Palace
Courtesy Four Seasons Gresham Palace
Where to stay in Budapest
Anantara New York Palace Budapest
The 185-room Anantara New York Palace, once the European headquarters of the New York Life Insurance company, is home to the late 19th-century New York Café, a ravishing Renaissance-style room bedecked with crystal chandeliers and marbled columns the literati once flocked to. Plenty brave the long lines to savor desserts like cottage cheese-stuffed pancakes in such a fanciful setting, but the rest of the hotel is hushed, with a hypnotic atrium looking onto arched corridors and guest rooms done up with stripes and golden bird silhouettes.
Completed in 1906, the Gresham Palace is an Art Nouveau treasure. Wrought-iron gates and mosaic tiles pave the way to the 179 softly hued Art Deco-style guest rooms—splurge on one facing the Danube—but do spend quality time downstairs, too. MÚZSA is the lobby hotspot for some of the city’s finest cocktails like the Ethereal. A refreshing vodka highball, it features a jolt of sour cherry, a summertime staple in Hungarian kitchens.
Hungarian Freemasons built the palace housing the 82-key Mystery Hotel in the 19th century, and it exudes a surreal air, with a theatrical lantern-flanked staircase, stately columns, sweeping curtains, and large-scale artworks. On the sixth floor, the Atelier studio recalls a painter’s workshop, melding brick walls with vivid rugs. From the rooftop Sky Garden, bask in views of the Gustave Eiffel-designed Nyugati (the train station that conveniently whisks jet setters to Prague) and the rest of the city, accompanied by a glass of sparkling wine from the renowned Hungarian producer Sauska.
At the 151-room W Budapest, a Neo-Renaissance building from 1886 once home to the Hungarian State Ballet Academy, lavish details like tiles and arches were preserved, yet are contemporized with such elements as sleek bronze cladding. Bold turquoise-colored guest rooms are also juxtaposed with checkerboard bath tiles that pay homage to the chess sets old-timers tote around to Budapest baths. Sample the Asian-inflected menu at Nightingale by Beefbar on the terrace directly across from the 19th-century Hungarian State Opera House designed by Miklós Ybl.
