Does the Blue Fox succeed in rising above in the face of this adversity? Read on to find out.

Desert Swizzle

I need to get one of these

First off, I love the presentation. Taking a sip through a metal straw while raising the drink through a long wooden handle made me feel like Gandalf smoking a pipe.

The drink description sounded enticing. Saffron gin, nut coffee, cardamom.  Swizzle is usually going to describe something from the Tiki family; the Queens Park Swizzle is perhaps the most famous. The traditional swizzle stick is actually cut from a plant indigenous to the Carribean (cocktail nerds with more money than sense can even buy an authentic swizzle stick on the internet).

I came in expecting a clever concoction marrying the spices of the islands with a gin base and coffee accent. Instead I got a one-note coffee drink that was a little on the sweet side.  It wasn’t a bad drink, but it fell far short of its potential. That said, I’d still happily go drink one again to recapture that feeling of arcane wizardry.

Clover Club

Lurking in the bottom of that liquid are “pearls” made of raspberry jelly

The Blue Fox menu is divided into two sections; reinterpretations of classics, and original drinks. The classic Clover Club is gin, lemon juice, and raspberry (plus egg white for texture). The menu listed the same ingredients (sans egg white). The drink showed up with a molecular gastronomy flourish of some “caviar” made of raspberry jam in some sweet liquor. It looked nice, but the caviar was hard to drink and just tasted like sugar. The drink underneath was similarly sweet, lacking sufficient citrus to balance it out, and with raspberry flavor barely in evidence. Without Tolkeinesque barware to save it, this drink was a miss.

House Made Amaro

The origami menu is actually super cool

Before I talk about the glass of alcohol, let’s take a minute to admire the branding work. That adorable blue fox is actually a folded up drink list. After we declared our intention to pay, the bartender quickly folded the little critter out of what otherwise looked like a normal (if square) seasonal drink menu.  It was both unexpected and delightful, characteristics I wish they had applied to their drinks.

On to the little taster glass. We’d been chatting with the bartender a lot, and as with many places we’ve been, he comped us a little treat when we closed out our bill.  Apparently one of the two bartenders had a grandmother with an Amaro recipe, and they had a stock of the finished product behind the bar. This stuff was excellent. Every bit as good as any commercial bottling, better than most. Of the amari I’ve tried, it was closest in flavor to Nonino.

The Verdict

As I mentioned at the top, hotel bars have a real challenge; they need to put together drinks that look and sound impressive, while not doing too much to challenge the palates of the average guest. True to form, the presentation was great, but the cocktails we tasted were too sweet and one-note. It may be that we chose the wrong drinks – the bartender we talked with seemed knowledgable and capable, and the off-menu house-made amaro was straight up delicious.

If you do find yourself at the Blue Fox, it might be worth asking the bartender to make you something complex and not overly sweet. It might even work.

As for me, I’m not going back.

Water Bus – Budapest

I could have used one of these on my last trip when the bridges were washed out from the floods

Pretty sure a strong wind would blow this thing on its side. It looks amazing though.

Stern Beer – Krakow

Harsh, but fair

This name cracks me up.  Tiara doesn’t find it funny. We leave it to you, readers.

Gummy Walker – St Paul De Vence

It came from a mediocre bistro!

These gummies came with the bill at a thoroughly unremarkable restaurant. From humble beginnings come great things…

Bootleg Cars Display – Czestochowa

For some reason the strip mall in Czestochowa had a bunch of cars that had been chopped up and made to look like Cars. The steering wheel in this one is actually hooked up. Impressive chop jobs.

Cairn – Trail around Vence

This cairn has no fewer than 13 carefully balanced rocks!

Fun fact, Tiara and I have taken dog surveys (highly scientific!) that say we should own a Cairn Terrier.

Bathroom Sign at Hanage Restaurant – Berlin

This speaks for itself.

I have an acquaintance who admitted to me of using western toilets in a squat toilet manner (figure 4). So it is possible Hanage has had these other problems as well.

These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty – Copenhagen Airport

Apparently we couldn’t wait long enough to take a picture before ripping into these thirst-inducing treats

Tiara and I have been slowly rewatching Seinfeld on this trip after hours. Obviously, we had to own this bag of These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty.

Pirate Wine Glass at La Cantine Restaurant – Paris

Yo ho, ho, and a bottle of Rosé

We had a really great set lunch at this place, and I fully intended to write about it. The skeleton chef wine glass will have to suffice.

I have no idea at Jardin d’Acclimitation – Paris

In the future, we will all be cows.

Okay, so I looked it up, and apparently transhumance is a real word:

the action or practice of moving livestock from one grazing ground to another in a seasonal cycle, typically to lowlands in winter and highlands in summer.

But I’m still going to picture a parade of variegated transhuman cow-people roaming the astroturf.

Visiting the thermal baths is one of those things you have to do in Budapest.  There are countless spas to choose from, and swayed by its pretty yellow buildings, we chose Széchenyi.  Also, it’s the largest medicinal bath in Europe, so there’s that.

A day ticket to the baths is about $15.  Once inside, treatments like massages and body scrubs are incredibly cheap, but we didn’t reserve any of those services.  Instead, we spent a few hours hopping between the 18 pools (3 outdoors and 15 indoors).  Wristbands that looked like watches were like our key cards for the day – they were the mechanism for locking our storage lockers and they also signified that we were allowed to be there.  Most importantly, they told us what time it was: bath time.

The pools range from 64° to 104° and the thermal springs that feed the baths contain calcium, magnesium, fluoride, sodium, sulphate, and more.  The minerals are supposed to cure pretty much everything.  I can’t verify that, but they did turn the water all kinds of neat colors.   The biggest surprise for us was the steam room, which sounded like something we’d hate but we actually liked it so much we kept going back in.  The steam had a menthol/eucalyptus quality to it which opened our lungs and may have helped Ian recover from his cold.  Our other favorite feature was the current pool shaped like a ring, which swept you around in circles and got going pretty fast.  This was fun until all the bros showed up.

Here’s another look at the outdoor pools, with the lap pool in the middle and the “activity” pools on the sides:

After this, Budapest’s campaign to win us over was no longer needed.  We were converted.

However, when we arrived in Budapest we were disappointed.  The heat wave still hadn’t broken so it was too hot to explore for most of the day.  All the food we had was heavy and really not good.  And, this was the first time our research had led us astray in terms of location.  The neighborhood we chose, Terézváros, was full of touristy restaurants and bars, and just seemed like a place people went to party.  Somewhere along the way, we realize, we got old.  Also, we’d travel to a destination only to find this sort of thing happen…constantly:

Fortunately, Budapest started what Ian called its “win back” campaign about 5 days into our stay, and we started to change our minds about the city, so much so that by the time we had to leave we had grown really fond of it.

Here are ten things that helped win us over:

1. Getting out of our neighborhood.  Next time, we’d stay in Buda, or maybe in the Inner City.  Every time we left our neighborhood (which was, on the plus side, extremely well-connected by transit) we discovered something awesome.
2. The stunning architecture, as mentioned in the previous post.
3. When Ian ordered a Campari soda at Fülemüle Étterem and got this whole set-up:
   
4. The heat wave broke (!!!) and we got caught in a torrential downpour:
   
5. Matzo ball soup:
   
6. Awesome markets like this one in Buda.  I actually found chard and other leafy greens here!
   
7. Exploring the famous sights at night when no one else was around:
   
8. We found outstanding coffee at Madal Café:
   
9. For me, running around Margaret Island was a highlight.  The views looked like this:
   
10. These marzipan My Little Ponies:
    

This is St. Stephen’s Basilica.  It’s nice!

Of all the festivities happening in Budapest, the one that we were most excited about was the blessing of the new bread.  We are still unclear what exactly “new bread” means and how old the old bread is, but we were excited to try some of this holy bread for ourselves.  Unfortunately, it turned out that tasting was not an option, but the ceremony had lots of other benefits.  For example, we got to witness the changing of the guard at Buda Castle:

We also got to see the ceremonial changing of the cable:

We’re really not sure what was going on here. It looked like he was trying to get the castle some free cable.

There were also lots of great outfits.  Observe:

If it’s not obvious, this kid really didn’t want to have his picture taken with the jolly man in the cape.

Best hat and mustache at the event. Also, there’s a loaf of bread that’s about to be blessed.

We don’t know what the wicker thing was for, but we liked it.

The best and most exciting part was the arrival of jesters and musicians on stilts!

This guy even had little stuffed legs to drape over his horse.

We did not follow the entire procession to the actual blessing, feeling that we were plenty blessed just to be in the presence of the new bread and the fancy outfits.

Chanterelles are in season in Poland right now and they are so cheap and delicious.

I successfully confused another waitress the following day when I ordered pho when it was 98° outside.  This time, she simply said, “Soup?”

A lot better than I expected

You’ve already seen zurek, but here’s another example from our visit to the Polish countryside (blog post forthcoming):

Breakfast soup

And finally, I continue to eat soup here in Budapest (shh…let’s pretend we’re still in Poland).  Here’s some fruit soup I ordered last night:

Tastes just like blueberry yogurt