Mick Hucknall Budapest 2013

Do you know Mick Hucknall. Maybe most people don’t know that name, but if we say, Simply Red, I’m sure, there are several fans, who remember the red, curly-haired singer, who charm his fans with his soft, wide-ranging voice.

Mick Hucknall BudapestMick Hucknall was born in 1960, Denton, England. His mother left her family, when the little Mick was only three years old, so he was brought up by his father. Hucknall met with his mother only three times in his lifetime.

The interesting about the musician career started in a Sex Pistols concert in Manchester, in 1976, after that Hucknall and a few friends formed the band, the Frantic Elevators. The name, Simply Red was born a few years later, inspired by the singer’s red hair. The band stayed up for 25 years and sold 50 million albums finally broke up in 2010. Mick Hucknall, the ex-singer made a solo album, the American Soul two years later, in 2012. The album include all of the songs which are inspired Hucknall in his career.

The can-not wait European tour will be in spring, 2013. Hucknall’s concerts are going to give an unforgettable experience with a performance style. One stop of the tour is the capital of Hungary, the wonderful Budapest, where Mick Hucknall is going to dazzle his fans in 25 March 2013 in the Budapest Sportarena. Don’t miss this probably never recurring occasion. Have fun!

Mick Hucknall concert in Budapest
March 25th
Budapest Sportarena

Tickets: Viagogo – WorldTicketShop

T-Bone steak at home in Budapest

Last week I saw some articles on the web about Rob Longworth, a Canadian expat who has lived in Budapest since 1990 and who has a long experience in the restaurant and food business. Recently he opened a website named primecuts.hu and from that website you can order meat from Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Canada and the US.

Since Hungary has lots of poultry and pork Rob Longworth does not offer such meat on the webpage, but if you are interested in beef or lamb, then this might be interesting. The lack of consistency in the quality of Hungarian beef was the main reason for creating the webpage, and now you can get top quality t-bone steaks and other meet delivered at your door in Budapest.

Personally I do like meat and I am very happy if I get a good steak, but I am not so much of a judge to say whether a piece of meat is bad, middle class or super. Anyway I contacted Rob and ordered a large piece of Eye of Rump Beef Roast and a USDA T-Bone Steak. I was lucky because he had something ready to deliver, so within a few days I got the meat delivered and then it was time for a T-Bone steak at home in Budapest. The Eye of Rump Beef Roast was a large piece of meat so I thawed it, cut parts of it into small steaks and the rest I roasted. Since I am not at all a master of this I did not really know what to expect, but I can say that I was very satisfied with both the T-Bone steak, the Eye of Rump steak and as I roasted the other parts of the beef it was very tasty and nice.

I received some advices from some friends of mine who are meat lovers with experience on the subject of steaks and preparing meat, so maybe that helped me out, but at least I can say that I had some really nice meat for both lunch and dinner the last days and I enjoyed it a lot (and so did my family).

If you know more about meat than I do and would like to have some premium quality delivered at your door in Budapest, then head over to Prime Cuts and place your order today!

 

Central Bistro & Bar Budapest review

Last Saturday I went with my wife and son to Danube Palace to listen to what Dr. Robi Sonderegger had to tell about family life and the importance of it. It ended at 13.00 and we then walked to Central Bistro & Bar to grab a quick lunch before we went home (we told the waiter upon arrival that we wanted a quick lunch). Well, seldom has a lunch succeeded as bad as this one!

We sat down and asked for a chair to our soon two year old boy. Unfortunately the restaurant had no such thing, so he had to sit in a mix of our laps, run around and the trolley. Most restaurants at least have the cheap IKEA chairs for children, but these were all missing. We sat down, looked at the menu and decided to go for a steak and a hamburger. But, none were really interested, so we had to wait a long time before the waiter even came over to take our order (remember: quick?!). We placed our order around 13.30. Around 14.00 the waiter finally came with our lunch, or at last what was supposed to be our lunch. My hamburger was very well done, and the hamburger bread was black on both inside and outside. Not totally burned, but you could really feel the taste of coal as you ate it.

My wife ordered a well done steak. After thirty minutes of waiting the steak was served, but not at all well done. Parts of the steak were in fact raw. She was starving, our son was starving and so was I. We therefore ate the over fried hamburger with the burnt hamburger breads, while we sent the steak back to let them do some more work on it. After 10-15 more minutes it was returned, but still not well done at all. So, once again it was returned and after 10-15 more minutes it was served for the third time. This time it was well done, and the taste was in fact good together with the mushroom sauce it was served together with.

During lunch time on a Saturday Central Bistro & Bar was quite well visited. I am not sure if that was the problem, but there were only two waiters working and they might have had a lot to do. But, if a restaurant is not capable of receiving a half full restaurant during lunch time the result will be like with us… unhappy guests who will never return. And then again the next time the restaurant will not even be half full.

The price for the steak was about 3000 Forints while the price of the hamburger was a bit less than 2000 Forints. Our original plan was to eat some desserts as well, but at 14.45 we were so fed up and our boy was so tired that we just hurried and payed the bill and jumped in our car and drove home. Somehow the experience remained as one of our worst Saturday lunches in a very long time…

It looks nice on the inside of Central Bistro and Bar

Central Bistro & Bar

Nador utca 13
Tel: +36 1 328 3460
Open: Monday – Sunday from 11.00-23.00

Torkos Csütörtök 2013

In 8 days you are invited to eat in Budapest restaurants at half price. Not all restaurants participate in this campaign, but quite a lot do.

The exact date for Torkos Csütörtök in 2013 is January 31st. Do not forget to book a table if you want a reservation on this date. Unfortunately we are not able to help out with bookings on this date. Some of the restaurants participating are: Karpatia, Matyas Pince, Nobu, Nador Winerestaurant, BorLaBor, Sercli, Baraka and many more.

For more information about Torkos Csütörtök you can visit Budapest blog or visit the official page.

Where can I find the schedule for the Hungarian State Opera?

Thank you for the question. If you want to find a schedule and buy tickets for the Hungarian State Opera I recommend that you visit Jegymester. There you will find an overview of performances and you will also be able to order tickets online for any performance.

Notice that the Hungarian State Opera has a long summer break so from end of May/June until end of September there are no performances available in the State Opera. If you still want to visit the building there are guided tours every day at 15.00 and 16.00 in this period!

Enjoy and hope you find what you are looking for.

Ask your Budapest question!

Hotel recommendations

Every winter we normally write a list recommending some great hotels in Budapest. I just realized that Budablogger at Budapest blog has already done so. Therefore we recommend that you visit the blog and read his blog post. He does not feature any three star hotel in hist list, so if you are looking for a great three star hotel in this period we would recommend Hotel Erzsebet in the very center of Budapest probably.

We also use the opportunity to wish you all a happy new year and see you soon in Budapest!

Hotels in Budapest

A small little news is that we have a new mobile Budapest Guide site in the process. It is not at all finished, but as it will be finished you can find it at the following address. The mobile Budapest Guide will let you read about the most popular Budapest programs, book a table at quite some restaurants, find information and prices on guided tour and different excursions and some basic Budapest information.

Cezanne exhibition opening hours and ticket price

I’m interested in Cezanne exhibition in Museum of fine arts in Budapest. Which are the days and hours when this museum is open and what are the costs of the tickets?

Thank you for the question. You can read further information about the exhibition in our special article about the Paul Cezanne exhibition in Budapest. The entrance fee if you pay full price is 3200 HUF per adult. If you buy the tickets online beforehand the price is 3000 HUF.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest where the exhibition can be seen is open Tuesday – Sunday from 10.00-18.00, but the ticket desks close one hour before closure. On Thursdays the museum has a longer opening time and is normally open until 22.00 in the evening.

Enjoy the exhibition and enjoy your stay in Budapest.

Ask your Budapest question!

How can I watch Swedish TV online from outside Sweden?

I am living in Budapest at the moment and want to see Swedish TV online (svt.se), but I get an error message that it is not possible. I think it is because I try to watch the live feed from outside Sweden. Can you help me?

Thank you for the question! The problem you have is very common as TV channels use a so-called geo-block to only let people inside the country watch their live broadcasts. The result is that when you try to watch the live feed of SVT.se (SVT Play) from outside Sweden you will get the following error message:

Error message on SVT.se
The following error message comes up in Swedish: “Videon är inte tillgänglig. Det kan finnas flera olika skäl till att du inte kan se videon.”

To fix this problem you need to do make the Swedish television page (SVT.se) believe that you are actually watching the webpage from within Sweden. That can easily be done, all you need to do is to get a Swedish IP address. A very easy way to get a Swedish IP address is to make a subscription to NordVPN. As you visit their page you can make a subscription for 1 month, 3 months, 6 months or 1 year. Once the subscription is made you can download their program and once downloaded you log in with your username and password, select a server in Sweden and in totally 5-10 minutes from now you can watch the live feed from SVT.se online.

We just tried this (writing the article from Hungary) and here you can see a screenshot what SVT.se live stream looked like after connecting to the Swedish server and restarting our browser.

watch STV live from outside Sweden
Watching STVPlay live from outside Sweden with NordVPN.

The program will also let you select servers from other nations in the world, so you can for example use this in the same way to watch the British channel ITV online and thus see British X-Factor and other shows. A very useful tool which we can warmly recommend through own experience. In addition to these services the program will also encrypt your Internet connection. This is very useful if you use open WiFi networks in cafes, restaurants and hotels, because this is normally very vulnerable and it is easy to steal your information as you use open/non secure WiFi networks. Once you use NordVPN to connect your information will be encrypted and you can surf the web safely.

Useful links:
NordVPN
SVT.se
SVTPlay.se