Just north of Budapest’s spectacular neo-Gothic Parliament is a tree-covered lozenge-shaped island in the middle of the Danube, where locals and tourists alike go to escape the hustle and bustle of the city without actually leaving the city. Yes, that’s not entirely different to my last post about escaping the city by going to Városliget but Margaret Island is very different from the City Park. My Hungarian colleague described it as “untouched” but that’s not strictly true, since a city bus runs the entire length of the island.
Let’s start at the southern end, which is where you’re likely to come onto the island. It has a bridge connecting it to Margaret Bridge, the one immediately north of Parliament. You can walk – I did – but there are also trams that stop right in the middle of the bridge specifically for getting to and from Margaret Island. And, of course, there’s that bus. Immediately to the south end, there’s a sports club and swimming pool but this isn’t the touristy kind. My priority, after walking all the way across the city, was to find a café. Once upon a time there was a café right on the bridge but it seems to be closed. But not far up, on the east side, there’s a row of Thai-style “beach cafes”. Well, they’re not Thai-style but they fit my idea of a Thai beach better than they fit a Baroque/Neoclassical/Neo-Gothic/ornate stone buildings city. I ended up in Hippie Island, since Stég Pub next door was closed. But before I got there, I ran into the Budapest sign at the entrance to this line of pop-up cafes. Most cities these days have one somewhere and I suppose it fits better here, among the trees and cafes and informality than it would anywhere in the grandeur of the mainland. Anyway, having taken my photos with it, I went on to find a drink.
I’d noticed that lemonade seemed to be a thing in various cafes so instead of a boring anonymous multinational fizzy cola drink, I opted for a melon lemonade. That was, perhaps, a risky thing to do – my brain said watermelon which is delicious but when I looked more closely, I realised all it said was melon and I am, at best, indifferent to plain melon. But when it arrived… oh, that was no mistake! That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever tasted! You know when you see people film themselves eating and drinking and they always overact enormously. But I caught myself doing the “sip – stop – big eyes – wow!” sequence in actual real life, albeit not with a camera on me. Fizzy, sweet, melony, lemony, clink of ice, slice of fruit, out in the sun in a chair made out of pallets, view over the Danube… if you’re going to Margaret Island, definitely stop off for a melon lemonade.
Besides a drink, there’s not a lot to actually do on Margaret Island. It’s a place to wander the woods, wander from field to field, have a picnic, look at ruins – there’s the remains of a monastery and a convent lurking in the woods – and generally enjoy some peace and quiet. If you want to burn off some energy, it’s an ideal place for a game of football or to do what a lot of the tourists are doing, hiring a bike bus. There are various multi-passenger bikes available to hire, taking from three to six passengers and tourists just haring up and down the island’s lanes. I didn’t myself. Being one person, the only kind of bike that really works solo is an ordinary bike and that’s just not as much fun as the bike buses. At the north end, there’s a Japanese garden which is worth a wander and a musical fountain which I found underwhelming, but then there was no water coming from it, just the music. There’s supposed to be a petting zoo somewhere, there’s an outdoor theatre and a water tower in typical ornate Budapest fashion. I spent a good half a day just wandering my way north, kicking crisp autumn leaves, setting up my camera in the fork of trees to take photos that I normally wouldn’t get to take on a city adventure and then I got the bus back down, off the island and back into the hustle and bustle of Budapest.
But one thing I hadn’t expected to find halfway up the island was Palatinus Baths. Budapest has a lot of thermal baths and I visited six of them. I knew of Palatinus but it hadn’t made it onto my list at that point. Nor had I realised exactly where it was. If I had, I’d have taken my swimming things with me and spent the afternoon there! As it was, I had to go back on my last morning, which made an excellent way to pass a day with luggage, even if it was only Ryanair personal item-only luggage.
I suspect Palatinus is a spectacular place in the summer. In the winter – and late October is winter, even if it’s bright and sunny and I’ve barely needed to even carry a jumper with me all week – most of the outdoor stuff is closed. It’s two flights of stairs from the changing rooms down to the indoor pools, which consists of one reasonably large thermal pool, one small hot plunge pool and one small cold plunge pool. In Iceland, I see men soaking for hours in 42° water. In Budapest, it’s a quick plunge. I plunged long enough to take a photo, in which I’m as red as the tiles around the pool. Then I crossed to the cold plunge pool, which is a relatively toasty 18-20° but felt like ice after a hot plunge. And then, half-scalded and half-frozen, I hastened back to the thermal pool to get all my extremities back to a comfortable temperature.
The abundant outdoor facilities are quite a trek down a long corridor. Actually, the outdoor facilities run the entire length of the long thin building but since most of them were drained and closed, there’s only really one place to exit the building and that was a walk. Now, normally I would probably have barely noticed the walk but one strict rule in Budapest thermal baths is that you wear “slippers” – some kind of pool shoes. Mine were blue flipflops I bought at Rudas Baths after my hotel cardboard-and-towelling slippers fell apart on the first day and they squealed. Even the journey from the hot plunge to the cold plunge becomes a trek when you’re making that kind of racket, so walking to the outdoor pool was quite an ordeal.
The only pools open in the winter are the thermal pool outside and the lane pool. The thermal pool is nice – it’s a square-ish pool with gently sloping edges rather than steps so you can lounge in the shallows like a beached whale or you can sit on the underwater benches on the opposite sides. It’s warm enough to sit outside quite comfortably on November 1st, especially under a blue sky and bright sun but not so hot that you start to feel uncomfortable. I was too lazy to actually swim.
There are six outdoor pools open in the summer, including a wave pool, a kids’ pool, a “round pool” with ornate fountain and massage jets and more thermal pools to laze around in. I bet in summer this place is just heaving but at this time of year it’s quiet. It’s a beautiful way to kill a few hours waiting for a plane. I spent most of it outside because the novelty of sitting outside in hot water will never not be a novelty but especially when my calendar says it’s November. The novelty has worn off a little in Iceland – I will always love sitting in a geothermal pool while snow spirals around me but it hits different on a warm day in Central Europe. A surprising number of people had brought books with them – not waterproof Kindles or phones but actually paper books. I see the pleasure of lying in the warm water in the fresh air just reading but I’m not sure I can bring myself to bring an actual book into the water. Maybe into the relax room, if there is one. Maybe on my sunlounger inside next to the pool. But not into the water.
If more pools had been open, I might have spent a bit longer at Palatinus but I was there probably four or five hours as it was, most of them outside. Then I had to go and finish off all the food that wasn’t going to fit into my personal item, and anyway, it was well past lunchtime. I can confirm that there’s no better place in Budapest to have a picnic than Margaret Island – except possibly Városliget. I sat on the grass, under a tree, watching bike buses go past, people playing football, other people picnicking. Then I walked down to the bridge across green fields and golden trees. It might have been just as busy as the city streets but Boti was right, something about it felt “untouched” despite the crowds, the baths and the big hotel and spa complex that occupies the northern tip of the island. Nothing felt less “untouched” than stumbling across that. It was also too busy to get on the bus. If you want to get the bus, you need to do it from the north end of Margaret Island, not the penultimate stop. So I just walked. It’s a nice place to walk.
I probably wouldn’t have found Margaret Island myself. My parents, who had been very enthusiastic about their own trip a few years ago, had never heard of it (although it turned out they’d also managed to miss the absolutely most basic Budapest experience of a Danube boat trip!). This is why it’s so good to get local recommendations because Margaret Island was wonderful. I mean, you go to Budapest for the architecture and the monuments (and the beer and the hot water…) but I found again and again that I enjoyed the quieter places with, perhaps, some lesser-known gems.
I Am A Polar Bear 