My third day in Budapest was pretty darn amazing. After a workout to trick myself into feeling virtuous after all those cakes at the New York Cafe the evening before, I trotted down the sweltering Andrássy Avenue in the direction of the Danube to spend a few hours at the Kempinski Hotel Spa.
The hotel: sheesh. I did the tour (pictures below) and it immediately made me want to check in: Nobu on site? Yep. Its own sweets and flower shop? Yep. Cosy bar and cushy sofas on which to drink tea or cocktails? Oh yes.
I sidestepped those charms and instead went for a ninety minute massage designed to lighten and invigorate. The firm strokes made me feel a little leaner and a LOT relaxed. There’s something in that, isn’t there? The sense of feeling lighter physically makes you feel stress, too, has been pushed out of your system by the hands of the masseuse.
Ninety minutes of stress/water retention drainage and a shower later, I was sat in the cafe ordering a salad from the Nobu menu. You may be thinking a salad’s a salad, right? A couple of leaves is nothing to blog about. Wrong. The menu is designed to be balanced so that you didn’t end up with a sugar surge after all the good work of the masseuse. And if you think that meant it was bland, think again. The flavoursome, fresh ingredients more than made up for what it lacked in gluttony.
Right, that’s enough about the salad – you get my drift: I was feeling good. After all that I reclined on the day bed until it had digested and then plopped into the pool for a couple of laps before steaming in one of the four steam/sauna rooms and dressing. I know adverts would have you believe women often leave a spa feeling lighter than an Aero or something equally silly but on this occasion I really did. I nearly skipped back to the Corinthia to dress for dinner.
Kempinski Spa Budapest /
The Blue Fox Bar /
The view from the Hotel Kempinski /
ÉS Bisztró & Terrace in the Hotel Kempinski Budapest /
REZKAKAS /
My Dad has a fondness for live music. It is for him a deal breaker if he cannot enjoy the strains of a violin or piano while he eats. It’s not that he doesn’t care for good food, just that he likes music a great deal more. I therefore asked the concierge at the hotel for recommendations of somewhere to satisfy our stomachs and his ears simultaneously. He told us Rezkakas would be just the ticket. And he was right: my dad was mesmerised by the gypsy band and we thought the small takes on Hungarian classics were positively delicious.
