Petronella Wyatt

Hot spot

The ongoing escapades of London's answer to Ally McBeal

issue 12 July 2003

It was extremely difficult to get a flight to Budapest last weekend. I had promised my friends the Karolyis, who have been a feature of this column, that I would attend an opera they were giving in the grounds of their house at a place called Föt. Yet Hungary seems to have become the most extraordinarily popular tourist destination.

The plane was packed like a bag in the Harvey Nichols sale. It was full mostly with English. I asked a group of young men why they had decided to spend their summer holiday in Hungary. They responded that they had heard that it was now a hot destination. This was certainly true. It hadn’t rained for two months, according to my Aunt Lili, and the temperature had been hovering in the high 80s.

But this was not quite what they meant. Among an increasingly large cognoscenti, Budapest has become the modish place to go.

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