Tony Denesa

How this started

It started the way it does for a lot of people: with a trip that was supposed to be four days and turned into a habit.

The first visit to Budapest was in winter, which in hindsight was luck rather than judgement. The city in January is not the city on the postcards — the terraces are shut, the light goes at four, and what is left is the part that does not perform for anyone: a bath full of steam and elderly men playing chess, a coffee house where people are working rather than photographing, a tram along a black river.

I went back the following spring to see whether the place held up in better weather. It did, differently. I have been going back ever since.

From enthusiasm to advising

For a long time this was just enthusiasm. Friends asked where to stay, I sent long emails, the emails got longer, and eventually somebody pointed out that I was doing consulting for free and badly organised.

Turning it into work changed what I paid attention to. Enthusiasm notices what is beautiful; advising has to notice what goes wrong. Which street is loud at two in the morning. Which bath is unbearable in August. Which restaurant on the main pedestrian street is charging double for worse food than the place three streets behind it. Which "central" apartment listing is forty minutes from the centre.

That is most of what a travel advisor actually does — not finding the famous things, which anyone can do, but knowing the specific, unglamorous catch attached to each of them.

Why this site is written the way it is

There are a great many Budapest guides and most of them are the same guide. They list the same twelve sights in the same order, they are cheerful about all of them, and they are cheerful because being critical is bad for affiliate conversion.

I would rather tell you not to stay in the Castle District.

So the rule here is that every recommendation carries its catch. The Castle District is magnificent and empties completely at six in the evening. The Jewish Quarter has the best food in the city and Kazinczy utca is genuinely loud until four. The upper towers of the Fisherman's Bastion charge admission and the free terrace four metres below has almost the same view.

Where the site earns money — accommodation, tickets, transfers — it is marked, and it never changes what gets recommended. There is a fuller explanation on the about page.

How the writing is done

The place pages are built from data: opening hours, review counts, coordinates, district. Those are facts, they are checked against the source, and where a fact is missing the sentence is simply not written rather than guessed at.

The long-form pieces — the guides, the blog, the district write-ups — are written. They carry opinions, and the opinions are mine.

If something here is wrong, out of date, or a place has closed, I would genuinely like to know.