How best to spend three and a half (3 1/2) days in Budapest Hungary

Last Updated on March 20, 2023 by PowersToTravel

Aka “Itinerary for My Top Sights in Budapest”

In September and October 2018 we visited several eastern and middle Europe countries:  Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany–Bavaria region.  Escorted by private driver/guides in Romania and Bulgaria, we made our way independently through the rest of the countries first by plane, then by rail.

Booking Ahead

Hotel

Our plans included a flight into Budapest from Sofia, Bulgaria; the airport bus (100E) stops at Déak Ferenc square.  It would hopefully be easy to manage our voluminous luggage on and off the bus.  A hotel near the square would eliminate the risk of a possible flight of metro stairs.

At this point I should mention that we don’t travel lightly – we aren’t vagabonds with simple backpacks.  My entire wheeled carry-on suitcase is filled with insulin in a special refrigerated case and quite a supply of insulin pump and continuous-glucose-monitoring supplies.  Of course there’s the other carry-on with the laptop and cameras.  Then there’s the two checked bags with clothes, toiletries and Greg’s electric two two-liter bottle refrigerated case with heavy electrical cords for his Diet Dr. Pepper.  In sum, luggage management dictates our hotel searches.

We chose the “Regency Suites Hotel” near the Déak Ferenc metro stop.   Cost effective, and ideally located, we also got free breakfasts!  We booked the hotel far in advance of our trip – in May.  When you study the Budapest metro map, you’ll also see Déak Ferenc’s proximity to the attractions themselves, or the metros or trams to reach them.  Link to hotel’s web site.

Attractions and Activities

Hungarian Parliament.  From a planning perspective, the next critical task was to nail down our tickets for the Parliament Tour.  I hate to  be required to keep my eye on the clock to meet appointments while I am sightseeing.  I’m fine with setting an alarm in the morning, so I had wanted first of the day tickets, which meant that the rest of the day could be at our leisure.  I was aware for more than six months that I needed to do this, but didn’t actually get myself in gear until Sept 2, which was 27 days prior to our planned tour date.  Sadly I found that the early tickets had already been purchased.  We were forced to go mid-day.

Dinner at Százéves Étterem.  Usually I scout out at least one highly rated traditional restaurant in order to make sure we enjoy the food of the country, properly cooked.  I’d found Százéves near the Danube River, near the quai for the evening Danube River cruises.  It seemed to fit our itinerary well.

I’d investigated having dinner on the river cruise, but discarded the idea after finding 1) how expensive it was, and 2) realizing that I would be wanting to take pictures constantly, and that could be awkward with a dinner cruise.  When I found that we could take the cruise without eating, I figured we’d go for the land-based restaurant, where the food was more assured to be good and prepared for us individually.  But I didn’t want to wait in a line, or have the restaurant be fully booked, so I booked a table five days in advance.

Silverline Sightseeing Cruise.  I considered pre-booking our seats on the cruise, but I didn’t.  I learned that there were a couple of sightseeing boats leaving at slightly different times that evening.  I figured that since we didn’t know how long we would be eating, we would just pop out of the restaurant, walk the five minutes to the quai and buy tickets for the next boat.  If it didn’t work out and advance reservations were required, we would be able to do it one of the following 3 nights, so I didn’t stress about it.  As it turned out, we were first in line at Silverline, and had to wait quite a while as the sun slowly set and the boat finally arrived.

Danube Bend Group Trip.  We are independent travelers, and it almost gagged me to think of being part of a mass of people from a huge bus being corralled by a person with a flag.  However, we also like to see a bit of the countryside, and renting a car for just one day seemed wasteful.  So we signed up for a Danube Bend Group trip, also booking that at the beginning of September.  There were several companies offering it.  We chose the “Danube Bend Day Trip from Budapest” through Viator, operated by Eurotours.

MavStart train tickets onward to Bratislava.

The tickets were very inexpensive online ($21 for two people.)  We booked them on the MavStart site (https://jegyvasarlas.mav-start.hu/eTicketV2/V2/Bejelentkezes.jsp?Lang=EN).  The blog Seat 61 (https://www.seat61.com/websites/mav-start.htm)  has more information about a new Hungarian railroads website which is now available.

Everything else in Budapest we visited on the fly, without reservations or pre-purchased tickets.

Detailed Itinerary

• Day 1 – Arrival, Laundry, St. Stephens, Százéves Étterem, a folk band and the Silverline Sightseeing Cruise.  Click here for all the details.
• Day 2 – Holocaust Memorial Center, Dohany Synagogue, retrieval of laundry, Gringo Amigos, the Szechenyi Bridge, Buda Castle, the Fisherman’s bastion, the Budapest Eye.  Click here for all the details.
• Day 3 – Central Market, Shoes on the Danube, Parliament, Szengengi Baths, Heros Square  Click here for all the details.
• Day 4 – Danube Bend Group Trip to Esztergom, Visigrad Castle and Szentendre  Click here for all the details.
• Day 5 – Onward to Bratislava.  What? There’s a day five?

I only mention this last day because of the one snaffoo we had getting a taxi to the train station.  As I mentioned, we had a significant volume of luggage, and we had been unable to find a convenient escalator to the metro which would take us to the Budapest-Nyugati train station.   We ordered the taxi for a time which was perhaps one hour earlier than necessary, not wanting to be late for our train, knowing it was a Monday morning.

For some reason our taxi just didn’t come and didn’t come; we went in twice to the reception in the hotel, who said there was traffic, and to just wait.  We saw taxi after taxi arrive on the small street behind the hotel, but none signaled to us.

Finally our taxi arrived, and we made it to the train station with just about 15 minutes to spare.  That was a good thing, because the taxi driver dropped us off on one side of the train station, and we had to wander through many corridors before we made it to the main waiting room.  He had not been a friendly driver, and I sort of felt he had dropped us off at an inconvenient location on purpose.  Oh, well.

Reflections

Do we feel that 3 ½ days in Budapest was over-kill?  Absolutely not.  In fact, Day 2 was so intense, with the many sights, and the walking, that we would have done better to split it into two days – one day doing the Jewish highlights, and the other up on Buda.  I also would have loved more time to just ride the trams around the neighborhoods.  We missed out on the Hungarian National Museum, as well as the museums in Buda.

Do we feel we did things we could easily have omitted?  Absolutely not!  Every location was memorable.  Even the day trip was “perfect” in that it let us relax and be led around, and we were able to keep off our feet for a bit, while seeing the countryside.

Best decision?  Hands down it was the Regency Suites Hotel.  It’s not a glamorous hotel by any stretch, but its location and price and free breakfast really suited us.  I can see by going to the hotel’s website now that they are undergoing renovations.  It should really be nice now, although probably they’ll jack up the price, as well.  We paid $107 a night for a slightly run-down standard double room.

Favorite attraction?  Central Market.  That was easy!  The colors and aromas!

Final take-away?  We loved Budapest, and really hope for a change to a more centrist political climate.  The anti-immigrant and pro-Christian rhetoric and momentum is frightening, in a country which should have learned its lessons from the past.  When we visit a country and its people, we often fall in love with it, and often our takeaway is that we “become” one of them.  We have “become” Peruvians, Albanians, Moroccans, Cambodians as we admired the best the country had to offer, and sometimes feel for their past and respect their dreams for the future.  We loved the beauty of Budapest and its art and architecture, but did not feel we wanted to “become” Hungarian.