We stayed at the 4* Taverna Hotel which is right in the main street, nice Hotel but as our friendly Hotel porter put it, it was in ' a very dangerous area'. We are all 40+ & were not looking for seedy places to go but just nice pubs & night life.
We all met up in reception on Friday night & while one of our group went outside for a cigarette he was approached by 2 local girls. They got chatting & told him that the one was a local & the other was her friend who was visiting for the weekend. They said they were going to a local bar which was very cheap & we were welcome to join them which we did. The place in question was just around the corner (Fontana Bar), we all went up in the lift and went into this club/restaurant and found a table. There was some singers on & we ordered a round of drinks & had a chat. We then ordered another round when one of our group decided we had better check out the prices of the drinks.
Thank goodness he did, a small bottle of beer was was about £11. We decided we had been 'done' & immediately asked for the bill. We had been there less than 1 hour, had 2 drinks each (the girls had ordered 4 each), all of them were small beers or single spirits and the bill came to 96,000HF which is over £260. To make matters worse, once the waitress had brought the bill a 'bouncer' who would not look out of place in London Zoo appeared & stood over the table until we handed over the money. Once we had paid, we left straight away & noticed that the doors had been locked too. The girls followed us & tried to take us somewhere else, they said they hadn't realised it was so expensive in there, - (yeah right!!). We left the girls outside & just walked away even though they were very insistent that we followed them.
This made us VERY wary about everywhere we went, as we walked up the main street it was full of very dubious men trying to get us to go to their clubs. Also loads of girls in pairs trying to befriend us.
Just down from our Hotel was a lapdance club & the girl on the door told us free entry & £6 for a drink & no extras, we politely declined her offer.
We then found a bar which was really good, good singers & stayed ther for 4 hours & cost us about a tenner each.
Speaking to the porter at the Hotel the next morning, he told us that we were staying in a very dangerous area and that we should watch out.
After a pleasant Saturday, we all returned to the Hotel to have a rest & get ready to go out in the evening. I was in the shower when my room mate banged on the door to say one of the boys was in trouble. He had gone for a walk while we were getting ready & had (very foolishly) gone into the lapdance bar for a drink. He was told it would be £6 for a drink & if we didn't like it he could leave. He went in bought a drink & immediately a couple of girls joined him, he refused to buy them a drink because he knew he would get ripped off. They started dancing for him, but after 10 minutes he realised he was going to get into trouble so he tried to leave. He was presented with a bill for over 156,000HF (£430). He was told it was the bill for the dances which the girls had done for him. Obviously he didn't have the money to pay, and also no credit card with him. The 'gorilla' threatened him & told him he must go & get the money. He was frogmarched back to the Hotel by 2 girls where he had to borrow cash from the rest of us to pay up. All the time the 1 girl had her mobile in her hand & said she would call the club if we did not pay.
After this experience, we decided to go back to the bar we had been to the previous night, we were too afraid to go anywhere else.
On leaving this bar, there was a guy walking on the other side of the road with what looked like a local girl, all of a sudden a new BMW 7 Series pulled up, out got 2 very large men who casually walked up to this guy. The one punched the guy once & hit him so hard it knocked him into the road, the men just casually walked back to their car & drove off.
We also spoke to other groups who had encountered the same problems as we had too.
There is no way any of us would even think about returning to this city, although it is a very beautiful city these people are spoiling it for not only the tourists but also for the law abiding Hungarians who try to make a decent living out out of the tourist trade.
Beware guys.
(Sorry for the long post)
In the end we had 2 beers...paid up and left - simple as! There's was another one we went in - right round the corner from where we were staying and that was great... No hassle and you didn't even have to have a dance if you didn't want to!
