Hungary

Budapest’s history runs deeper than its architecture lets on. The city’s bath culture goes back almost two thousand years, to Roman settlements built around the area’s hot springs — the Corinthia Hotel’s spa is a direct descendant of that tradition, by way of Turkish bathhouses built during their 150-year rule from the 16th to 17th centuries. Four Seasons Gresham Palace is the more visible version of that same depth: 1,000 years of Budapest history behind an Art Nouveau facade.

Prestige Hotel is easy to miss entirely — hidden down an alley, unobtrusive from the street — set inside a renovated 19th-century apartment building with Michelin-starred food on site. And Baltazar, in the historic Buda side of the city, is where we had some of the best wine of the whole trip, in a neighborhood of medieval lanes and thermal baths on the banks of the Danube.