Funnily enough, this is only the first of two stag do’s in Budapest I have this year! It seems my entire year’s budget is going on weddings and drinking holidays. So much for my plans to head off to Thailand for a month. It does seem like I’ve reached the age where everyone is settling down except myself, maybe it’s time to grow up (oh dear, time to get on a dating site).
Ignoring all that though, this was an amazing trip to one of Europe’s most gorgeous cities, with wild nightlife and great spa’s to relax in the next day.
Arrivals
One of the best things booked beforehand was a guide, who collects you from the airport to your hostel and then will deliver you to every activity you complete. It stops you from missing out on something exciting or wasting time away. It also prevented us from getting ripped off by the fake taxi’s, which plague the city.
We collected our bags and headed on to the Marco Polo hostel, not an amazing hostel but we managed to get our whole group into one room so that we didn’t have to share with others (a nice touch considering I’d feel sorry for someone sharing with a stag group).
One thing to be prepared for is the Marco Polo has an extortionate deposit request upfront, where they took 20,000 forint (£50) but hadn’t let us know this was required. You get the money back on the day you leave, but that isn’t much use when you suddenly need to blow £50 in foreign currency in a very cheap location! I ended up with loads of money left over because of this ridiculous fee, however it’s fine with me as I’ll be back in 2 months!
The activities
We booked gun firing as the core activity for the Saturday, while this definitely lived up to the hype. I don’t agree with gun laws in America and feel people shouldn’t be able to get hold of a gun unless it is required for their work…However, purely from a sporting point of view, DAMN that was fun! Cocking a shotgun was un-frickin-believable. I wanted to do it one handed, but you don’t want to annoy the gun experts of Hungary so I figured I’d stick to the rules.
Beyond a shotgun, we also got to shoot the starter gun, revolver, glok, an MP3 and an AK47.
I didn’t really feel much recoil, however my accuracy was atrocious. If a zombie apocalypse were to occur, I might have to accept my fate straight away. Who am I kidding, I’d be raiding Tesco’s for all the tins of spaghetti hoops I could find!
We didn’t go to the Spa party, but we spoke to two people afterwards about it and they said it was amazing. The one issue (which was highly predictable) was that it was a bit of a cockfest. I can imagine it being 80% guys. This was a bit offputting, as the club we went to was more like 80% females! As a single guy, that is a big selling point!
We went to the spa on the final day, which was so incredibly nice while hungover. We also booked a massage each, but the temptation to book a full body wax for the stag was intense! I’d definitely recommend relaxing here when you’re hungover.
Clubbing
As previously mentioned, the clubs we went to were amazing. I’m trying to find the name of the bar that we were in but it was the best bar I have been to in years! It had something like 26 different rooms, so it was quite easy to get a bit lost, especially while intoxicated, but each room had its own charm. You felt like you were on a bar crawl within a single venue, it was amazing.
There were plenty of places we missed out on (to be ticked off another day) such as the ruins bars
, however we had a strict itinerary we were trying to keep to. Plus, I’m not going to lie, it is a bit of a blur!
Eating Out
We arranged a 3 course meal when booking the entire stag do, which was held in a private room of the restaurant, meaning we could be as loud as we wanted without disturbing others.
There is also a bar on a boat as you reach the river, but be prepared to pay London prices for these venues. It was a shock to the system, going from £1 for a drink to £5.
Are you heading out there?
If you’re thinking of booking a stag do to Budapest, please feel free to email me any questions you have to tom_bourlet@hotmail.co.uk and I would be more than happy to help! It is easily one of the best locations in Europe to celebrate your big send off, while there were also plenty of hen do’s on the same track. It’s also ridiculously cheap, a nice added bonus.