Two love poems

1. Night

We ascend the bastion at night,
pass teenagers smoking at a bus stop

the mumble of their phone music
sinking into mist.

Cold air chews our thighs,
muscles hot from climbing stairs.

Aren’t you scared? Winding through
deserted medieval chambers,

streetlights glimmer
through cracks in the brick

yellow like the ghost coats of fisherman, look!
Ghost herring flips across the Danube.

We slope through ticket barriers,
alley cats skittish with insomnia.

From the hotel, men wearing suits
talk with after-midnight tones

in a language we’ll never know.
They sink into the lobby, gone –

the air now soundless, sudden composure
drone of distant traffic absorbed 

by the conversation amongst trees.
Noises that once could be named

unsettle, echo something stranger,
the city seems shifting. Us in the very centre,

our words skimming across the hush –
I’m so glad you gifted me this: the night,

these
cobbled streets.

2. Day 

A winter swim
in steaming cyan, we

unearth ourselves from coats,
gloves, hats, thaw our lips.

Laundered towels preserve
the heat of the bath.

I am warm all day.

Lampshades, a man selling nuts
from a bowler hat, cinnamon sticks

tied in string. I feel the closeness of it all,
invite you to hold my hand and feel it too.

We watch the Danube approaching,
eat dough from inside a spiced roll.

At the thrift shop, shirts slip over skin,
a soft heat, thermal waters enduring,

try on blue ones, green, the colours
of winter swimming, say: do you like it?

I like it so much, my darling, drifting
through this unknown pool

learning how to swim
in pairs.

From the notebook: 

Accomodation: AirBnB, £120 (3 nights for 2 people).
Travel: Flights, £161, Wizz Air (2 people there and back, flying from London).
Places to Eat: To save money we bought food in the local supermarket and ate breakfast in our Air BnB every morning. Eating out was quite expensive and we did feel as though sometimes restaurant were charging more when it was clear we didn’t speak Hungarian (and didn’t understand the exchange rate!) However, we did enjoy some lovely meals at some really nice restaurants, including:
– Nova, we’d recommend ordering the unusual lavender lemonade!
– Mazel Tov, this is a lovely ruin bar decked in plants and pretty lights. The hummus and pitta here was delicious.
– We also enjoyed some amazing goulash in one of the many traditional restaurants in front of the river Danube (on the Pest side!) We’d suggest sitting outside under blankets in candlelight and eating local food whilst watching the trams slide past, a bit cold in winter but definitely worth it for the atmosphere.

Activities / Places to Visit:
– First of all, you must go vintage shopping – there’s so many unusual and one-off pieces to be found in Budapest’s vintage stores. Try: Retrock Designer Vintage Store, Szputnyik shop D20 and LoveBug Vintage.
– There are also so many great places to visit that are a little more touristy, including Buda Castle, Matthias Church which we visited in the middle of night and thoroughly enjoyed, various ruin bars, the Hungarian Parliament Building, Margaret Island where you can hire pedal-cars and race around a tranquil and green park.
– And last, but definitely not least, the Szechenyi Baths. These baths are absolutely stunning and a vital part of Budapest’s culture, we’d advise taking towels and flip-flops as we took neither and found hiring towels/walking around in bare feet to be a bit of a chilly nightmare!