Budapest, Hungary
Posted by cpjanus on April 11, 2009
Budapest is a great and highly recommended city to visit in Europe. If you have the itch to visit Prague, think twice and consider going to Budapest instead.
This lovely city is situated on the Danube River. West of the Danube is Buda and east of the Danube is Pest. The Pest side seemed to have more places to stay and better access to transport whereas the Buda side had many great baths and the Castle Hill. We stayed on the Pest side and walked over bridges to go to Castle Hill and Gellert Bath. Speaking of baths, I highly recommend you visit at least one. We tried Gellert because we didn’t need reservations and it was open to both men and women on the same day (although we were still in separate baths for most of the visit).
Besides Castle Hill and the baths, I also recommend visiting Vasarcsarnok market. Its a great, renovated, market which has plenty of treats, foods (the apples are great!) and gifts. We also enjoyed searching out wine bars (borozo) (also, the wines of Hungary are great esp the dry whites) and strolling down the chic shopping street Vaci utca and people watching from a cafe. I also think that Budapest has a great opera and symphony (but its was closed when we were there (in August)) and I recommend just wandering the city and exploring. Part of what we liked best was that Budapest was a bit less touristy then Prague and Vienna and so we felt we got to experience more of the culture.
As far as a place to stay, we stayed at Caterina Hostel and I highly recommend it. Joe and staff were very friendly and the place was actually nice. The outside wasn’t the greatest and walking up the steps to the hostel (I think it was on the 3rd floor) gave us doubts but once we reached the hostel we were very happy.
And finally, if you happen to be in Europe in late August, I’d try to visit Budapest on Saint Stephen’s Day (August 20). It is a national holiday. The have a huge festival along the Danube and fireworks at night. When we there, we greatly enjoyed it and sat along the Danube for the fireworks show. Unfortunately, a sudden storm moved through the area and caused mayhem and some fatalities (thankfully we stayed along the bank and were guided to shelter by so friendly locals). Amazingly, during this severe storm, the fireworks continued.
For general information about travel to Europe see here.
(FYI – I traveled in Budapest during August 2006.)
