Buda is the hill. Pest is the night. The Danube runs between them.
Which evening cruise pours a drink worth having. What a Széchenyi ticket costs once the cabin is added. Every tour you can book in Hungary, reviewed and priced.
A boat, a bath, a hill and a parliament.
Four bookings hold up a first week in Budapest. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
- 01The first eveningCity Highlights Cruise with Welcome DrinkAn hour on the water with a drink in your hand, past the Parliament and under the Chain Bridge. Board after dark, when the whole embankment is floodlit.
02The afternoon offSzéchenyi Spa Day Ticket with Optional UpgradesSzéchenyi is the big yellow one in the City Park, thermal water outdoors at 38 degrees. Go on a weekday and the chess boards are still free.
03Under Castle HillBuda Castle Cave TourThe cellars below the Buda palace were dug as wine stores and used as shelters. Cool, dim and about ten degrees below whatever the street is doing.
04The timed oneParliament Building Entry Ticket and Audio GuideInside the Parliament with an audio guide, up the grand staircase to the crown jewels. Slots are capped and the building closes without notice when the house sits.
Sightseeing hour, dinner sailing or an open bar. Pick your boat.
Almost every Budapest evening ends up on the river, and the boats are not interchangeable. Four kinds of sailing, what it costs to get on board, and which one suits the night you had in mind.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · Nighttime or Daytime Sightseeing Cruise
The sightseeing hourBoth banks floodlit, a drink on the way, back by nine.
Dinner on the waterThree courses and live music while the castle slides past.
The open barUnlimited prosecco, a deck full of people, no last orders.
Under your own armPaddling past Margaret Island early, before the ferries wake up.
All 98 days and nights on the river →
Budapest does its best work once the floodlights come on.
Pest turns the Parliament and the bridges gold at dusk, the boats fill up, and the courtyards of the seventh district open bars inside buildings that were left to fall down. Nothing here shuts at a sensible hour.
Buda keeps the view. You have to climb for it.
The whole ridge, reviewed →
The palace, the Bastion terraces and Matthias Church sit on one ridge above the river, and the whole of Pest lines up on the far bank. Funicular, bus or a twenty-minute walk from the Chain Bridge. These three take more travellers up than anything else.
The cellars under the palace
The hill is hollow. Wine stores, wartime shelters and a labyrinth of passages run under the palace at a steady chill, which makes this the one Buda booking that improves in a heatwave.
Inside the Parliament
Guided only, in fixed language slots, and cancelled outright on sitting days. Book the slot before you book anything around it, because nothing about it moves.
The Basilica dome terrace
The cheapest wide view in the city, straight down Andrássy and over every roof in Pest. The mummified right hand of Saint Stephen is in a side chapel on the way out.
The days out more travellers book than any other in Hungary.
Every Hungarian day out we rate →Ordered by how many people actually take them, with the price and the verdict on each.
1
City Highlights Cruise with Welcome Drink
Cruise Budapest’s Danube for one hour with Portum Lines, passing Parliament, Buda Castle, Gellért Hill, the bridges, and Vigadó Concert Hall. You receive one alcoholic or non-alcoholic welcome drink, then may buy more from the onboard bar. Choose a sunset or evening departure, arrive early for an open-deck seat, and expect no guide or commentary.
From · $14
Read our review →
2
Unlimited Prosecco, Beer and Aperol Spritz Cruise
from $28
3
Széchenyi Spa Day Ticket with Optional Upgrades
from $51
4
Nighttime or Daytime Sightseeing Cruise
from $14
5
1-Hour Evening Sightseeing Cruise with Drink
from $28
6
Budapest Danube Cruise and Dinner Options, Live Music and Dance
from $54
7
Historic Cruise with Welcome Drink
from $12
8
St. Stephen’s Basilica Entry with Terrace Option
from $9
What a day out in Hungary actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped into three price brackets. Budapest is one of the last capitals in Europe where the good version of a thing still comes in under the price of dinner at home.
Cruise hours, bath tickets, walking tours and most of the entry passes.
Dinner sailings, the Danube Bend and Balaton day trips, caving, the horse shows.
Private guides, Tokaj cellar days and the trips that use a car and a driver all day.
Hungary keeps going for two hours in every direction out of Keleti.
North the Danube turns hard west between hills and runs past Szentendre, Visegrád and the basilica at Esztergom. West it is Balaton, a shallow inland sea you can wade halfway across. East there is Eger and its bull’s blood, and the Tokaj slopes beyond it.
Every day trip out of Budapest →
Four Hungarian bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of Budapest can be settled from a bar stool the night before. These four run on capped slots, kitchen covers and a parliamentary calendar that has never heard of your flight.
- 01Parliament Building Entry Ticket and Audio GuideEntry is guided only, in capped slots by language, and the building shuts to visitors on sitting days.
- 02Dinner Cruise with Live Music and Folk Dance ShowOne seating, one kitchen, a fixed cast-off time. Tables go first for the hour the floodlights come on.
- 03Hungarian Folklore Dance Performance & Concert TicketPerformance nights are fixed and the rooms are small. There is no second showing to slide into.
- 04Premium Sightseeing Cruise with Tokaj FrizzanteCellars are a two-hour drive out and visit by appointment. Nobody is opening up for a walk-in.
Budapest was built for bad weather. It sends you underground and into hot water.
Winter sits on freezing for weeks and July can hit the mid thirties, and the city answers both the same way: get under a roof, or into the thermal water. There are 120 hot springs under this town, caves under the Buda hills, cellars under everything else, and concert halls that sell out on a Tuesday.
- 1Széchenyi Spa Day Ticket with Optional Upgradesfrom $51
- 2Buda Castle Cave Tourfrom $19
- 3Full-Day Gellért Spa Ticketfrom $48
Three things Hungary does that nowhere else bothered to invent.
Bars and cake and public sculpture are everywhere. A bar built inside a condemned tenement, a cake baked on a spinning log, and a field of dictators nobody quite threw away are not.
The Ruin Bars
The old Jewish quarter was left to crumble for decades, and in 2002 somebody opened a bar in one of the condemned courtyards rather than fix it. Szimpla Kert is still there, five floors of mismatched furniture around an open yard, and a dozen others copied the idea on the same few streets. The buildings are the decoration.
- 1Ruin Bar Pub Crawl with Entry Tickets★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 1,028 reviews
- 2Budapest Original Ruin Pub Crawl Including 5 Shots★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 519 reviews
- 3Budapest Ruin Pub Crawl +6 Shots +VIP Entries +Drinking Games★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 230 reviews
Kürtőskalács
Sweet dough is wound round a wooden spindle, rolled in sugar and turned over embers until the outside caramelises into a shell. It came over from Transylvania, it is hollow, and it is meant to be pulled apart in a spiral rather than bitten. Buy it where the log is actually turning, not where the trays are stacked.
- 1Hungarian Chimney Cake Workshop in the City Center★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 885 reviews
- 2Chimney Cake Workshop Budapest Downtown – Kürtőskalács Class★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 220 reviews
- 3Kürtőskalács: Chimney Cake Workshop in City Park Budapest★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 25 reviews
Memento Park
When the statues came down in 1989 they were not smashed. They were trucked to a field on the southern edge of the city and stood up again in rows: Lenin, Marx, a bronze pair of boots where Stalin used to be. It is deliberately unglamorous, which is the point the designer was making.
- 1Communist History Tour with House of Terror Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 182 reviews
- 23-Hour Walking Tour About Communism (Small Group)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 70 reviews
- 3Communism in Hungary with a Historian★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 70 reviews
Paprika by the sack, cellars cut into rock, and lunch that takes four hours.
The Great Market Hall opens at six and is worth the early start. After that it is goulash that bears no relation to the stuff at home, Tokaj poured sweet and cold, and a bull’s blood red from Eger that the label refuses to explain.
By place — the city, the bend and the lake
By kind of day — deck, bath, cellar or pavement
Castle Hill, the baths, the river, then the bend upstream.
Parliament
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