Browsing Tag

new year’s eve

Expat Life

How we celebrated the Holidays in Budapest

January 16, 2019

Firstly, I’d like to start of 2019 by wishing you all a Happy New Year! I know I’m about two weeks too late, but I mean it all the same. Blame it on the constant colds that my husband and I have been trading back and forth since mid-December (she writes as she sneezes). As usual, I can’t really be bothered to make any New Year’s resolutions this year. Life seemed to go so fast so this past year and I want to remember to live in the moment, not think too far ahead, appreciate what I have and spend time with the people that matter. This is how we celebrated the holidays in Budapest…

How we celebrated the Holidays

Christmas is our favourite time of year. Andrew and I also go all out with planning and decorating that culminates in our annual Christmas Party. And while I didn’t post about it, I did take a lot of video. The first event of the season we attended was the St. Andrew’s Ball. You can see more of that by watching it here on our YouTube Channel.

St Andrews Ball Budapest
To kick off the holiday season, we attended the St. Andrew’s Ball held at the Budapest Marriott Hotel.

Now if you have ever been to any of our parties before, you know one thing – there are going to be a lot of lights (and a lot of wine). My clever husband spent just over two months building and programming the light show this year. And of course, since we no longer have a front lawn, it was indoors. SO MUCH FUN! And in case you want to be in the know, the software he uses to program is called xlights.

Christmas Day

Christmas in Budapest is just beautiful and we are lucky to have some good friends to share it with. However, it was hard to be away from our families. On the other hand, Andrew was as sick as I have ever seen him with a terrible cold immediately following our Christmas Party. And just when he started to feel better – I caught it. Just in time for Christmas Eve. Ugh. Luckily, Advil Cold helped me make it to our lovely Christmas Day Brunch at the Ritz Carlton. Thanks to our friend, Chris for arranging.

The gorgeous tree in the dining room at the Ritz-Carlton on Christmas Day.
My specially made “Chestnut Purée”. My absolute favourite holiday dessert.

New Year’s Eve

We both started to feel better again in time for New Year’s Eve and celebrated at Fat Mo’s Jazz Club. This night was so much fun – I will definitely look at going back again next year. We ate, drank champagne, celebrated birthdays and even lit the club on fire! Again, I filmed most of it, so you can watch that video here now.

The two birthday girls celebrating together on New Year’s Eve at Fat Mo’s

In the Bleak Midwinter

As we settle into the middle of January, we are both busy working and trying to “un-decorate” our apartment. Quite the endeavour… We’re also trying to finally get over these “boomerang” colds. The misery just seems to keep coming back and lingering on. Fingers crossed the colds go away for good soon – we’re off to Amsterdam in couple of weeks!

Expat Life, Personal Stories

Our Fun and Festive New Year’s Eve Celebration in Budapest

January 1, 2018
Baalbak New Years Eve

Andrew and I had our first fun and festive New Year’s Eve celebration in Budapest last night. We celebrated with two other couples at the Baalbek Lebanese Restaurant located inside the Buddha-Bar Hotel Klotild Palace. We ate an Arabic Style Gala dinner listening to live music and enjoyed the belly dancing show.

Our new friends kindly invited us to their gorgeous apartment near the Parliament for cocktails. After we spent some time drooling over their gorgeous apartment and Danube River view, we headed off to the Baalbek for dinner around 7pm.

Parliament Building

The Hungarian Parliament Building on New Year’s Eve.

Buddha Bar Hotel Entrance

Buddha Bar Hotel Entrance

Aniko Friends

New friends in Budapest. Such wonderful ladies!

Andrew enjoying the show

Andrew enjoying the show. It was a thrill to experience something out of the ordinary for New Year’s Eve.

The Klotild Palace

The Klotild Palace is built in a British neo-baroque, eclectic style in the 5th district of Budapest, at Ferenciek Square.  Princess Marie Clotilde, the wife of Archduke Joseph Karl had the palace built in the 1880s.  The building’s glass windows were made in the workshop of Miksa Róth, while the 48-meter-high towers are adorned with an enlarged replica of the archduke’s crown. It is the first building in Budapest to be fitted with an elevator. With various uses over the past century, the Buddha Bar Hotel was opened in 2012.

Buddha Bar Hotel

Klotild Palace near the Elizabeth Bridge in Budapest. Photo: Juhász Norbert

New Year’s Eve Dinner

Since it was my birthday celebration as well as New Year’s Eve, Andrew let me decide to where to go for dinner.  One of the reasons I picked Baalbek was because we had never experienced Lebanese food before.  It definitely wasn’t a typical New Year’s Eve dinner at the yacht club…

For our appetizers, we feasted on a gorgeous platter of hummus, moutabel (eggplant cream), beetroot, tabbouleh (parsley salad), kibbeh, grilled salty cheese and spicy lamb sausage. Not surprisingly, I ate every last bit of this offering, but my British husband skipped a few suspicious looking items.

Baalbek

Mezze

Incredible food at the Baalbek Lebanese Restaurant

Our second course was lentil Soup with sumac and scallop. Lentil soup is a tradition here in Hungary.  It is typically served on New Year’s Day and can be found at most restaurants. The traditional goes that if you eat lentils – a symbol of money coming your way for the coming year – abundance in all worldly goods will accompany you in the New Year. *fingers-crossed*

The main course was a choice of meat or fish and we both had beef tenderloin with potato gratin and green pepper sauce. It was followed by a coconut & rose water cake with raspberry sorbet.  I enjoyed the sorbet but strongly disliked the cake.  Luckily, Andrew loved it and ate mine too.

Coconut & Rose Water Cake with Raspberry Sorbet

Coconut & Rose Water Cake with Raspberry Sorbet

Happy New Year

Thanks to my husband, my family and my friends (old and new) for making 2017 a fabulous one! We are finally moved into our new apartment and our things will arrive from Canada in a couple of weeks. I am looking forward to more adventures in 2018.

What did you do for New Year’s Eve? Let me know in the comments below!

All the best from Budapest!