Buda climbs the hill. Pest stays up all night.
Which Danube boat is worth the fare. What a Széchenyi ticket actually buys you. How far ahead the Parliament slots go. Reviews of every tour and ticket you can book in Budapest.
Four bookings a first Budapest trip is built around.
A boat at dusk, a long soak, the Parliament, and the tunnels under the castle. What each costs and what the people who went make of it.
01The first eveningCity Highlights Cruise with Welcome DrinkAn hour on the water while the embankments come on. The cheapest way to see the whole city at once.
02The long soakSzéchenyi Spa Day Ticket with Optional UpgradesSzéchenyi is the yellow palace with the chess players in the outdoor pool. Go on a weekday morning and it is half empty.
03The one that sells outParliament Building Entry Ticket and Audio GuideThe chamber, the crown jewels and the red carpet stair. Entry is by timed slot only, so this is the booking to make first.
04Under the hillBuda Castle Cave TourA limestone cellar system running under the castle, cool in any weather. Short, cheap and genuinely strange.
Sightseeing boat, dinner boat, or the one with unlimited prosecco.
Almost every visitor ends up on the water, and the fares are not close. Four kinds of sailing, what each one costs to board, and which part of the evening it suits.
Six things Budapest is actually known for.
A river that splits the city in two, a hill full of tunnels, thermal water hot enough to steam in January, a food hall, a district of bars in ruined courtyards, and the bend in the Danube an hour upstream.
Buda before the coaches, Pest after lunch.
Everything on Castle Hill →
The funicular queue starts at nine and the hill is quiet before it. Do the palace, the Bastion terrace and the cave system in a morning, then cross a bridge and spend the afternoon in Pest, where the big rooms are.
Inside the Parliament, and how far ahead
Entry is only ever on a guided tour, in a fixed language, at a fixed time. The chamber and the crown jewels take under an hour, and the English slots go before the Hungarian ones.
The Basilica dome, and the terrace ticket
The nave is free to look into. The money buys the panorama terrace around the dome, which puts you level with the roofs and looking straight down Zrínyi utca at the river.
District VII, the synagogue and the memorial
The Dohány Street synagogue is the largest in Europe, and the garden behind it is a cemetery, which no synagogue is meant to have. Guides here handle the whole story, not just the building.
Budapest on foot, on two wheels, or standing up on a segway.
The centre is flat and walkable, Castle Hill is not, and the distance between the two is bigger than the map suggests. Pick the one that matches your legs and the weather.
The days out more travellers book than anything else in Budapest.
Every Budapest review →The boats, the baths and the tickets that carry the biggest share of the city, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
City Highlights Cruise with Welcome Drink
Cruise the Danube for one hour from Dock 42, with an alcoholic or non-alcoholic welcome drink on arrival. There is no guide or audio commentary, so you set your own pace while viewing Parliament, Buda Castle, Várkert Bazár, Gellért Hill, and Budapest’s illuminated riverfront.
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
Historic Cruise with Welcome Drink
from $12
7
St. Stephen’s Basilica Entry with Terrace Option
from $9
8
Budapest By Night Sightseeing Cruise
from $16
Budapest sits on hot springs, so the city bathes indoors and out.
Széchenyi is the enormous yellow one in the park, with the outdoor pools that steam in winter. Gellért is the tiled art nouveau hall on the Buda side. Both take walk-ins, both are calmer before eleven, and a cabin costs a little more than a locker.
Every bath and spa ticket →
District VII drinks in buildings nobody got round to demolishing.
The ruin bars started when squatters put a bar in a condemned courtyard on Kazinczy utca and left the plaster peeling. Twenty years on there are dozens, they open late, and a guided crawl is mostly about getting into the right ones without queueing.
- 11-Hour Evening Sightseeing Cruise with Drinkfrom $28
- 2Budapest By Night Sightseeing Cruisefrom $16
- 3Evening Cruise including Drinks and Live Musicfrom $24
Budapest stays cheap until you board a boat with a menu.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Budapest is the cheapest of the big central European capitals, and it shows most at the bottom of this list.
Boat tickets, bath entry, walking tours and the church terraces.
Dinner cruises, food walks, cooking classes and the day trips upriver.
Private guides, charter boats and the once-a-trip splurges.
Three things Budapest does that nowhere else quite manages.
Plenty of cities have a river and a nightlife district. Chess played in an outdoor thermal pool in December, a bar built inside a condemned tenement, and a parliament that looks best from a boat are Budapest specifics.
The Thermal Baths
Over a hundred springs come up under the city, hot enough that the outdoor pools steam through the winter and the regulars play chess on floating boards while it snows. Széchenyi is the grand yellow one in City Park; Gellért is the tiled art nouveau hall under the hill; Rudas keeps a Turkish octagonal pool from the sixteenth century and a rooftop tub over the river.
- 1Széchenyi Spa Day Ticket with Optional Upgrades★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 23,911 reviews
- 2Full-Day Gellért Spa Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 3,340 reviews
- 3Mandala Day Spa & Luxury Pool Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,604 reviews
The Ruin Bars
When the old Jewish quarter emptied out, its courtyard blocks stood derelict for decades. Somebody put a bar in one on Kazinczy utca, hung bicycle frames from the ceiling, and never repaired the walls. The formula stuck. Most are free to enter, they run until four, and the good ones are still the ones that look condemned from the street.
- 1Bar Crawl with a Local Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,112 reviews
- 2Budapest Original Ruin Pub Crawl Including 5 Shots★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 519 reviews
- 3The Original Budapest Pub Crawl – Free Shots, Games & VIP Entry★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 359 reviews
The River at Night
The Parliament, the Chain Bridge and the castle all face the water, and all three are floodlit from about sunset. From the embankment you get one of them at a time. From midstream you get the lot, in sequence, for about the price of two coffees, which is why the evening boats sail hourly and still fill.
- 1Evening Cruise including Drinks and Live Music★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 5,512 reviews
- 2Budapest Danube River Sightseeing Night Cruise with Drink★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,553 reviews
- 3Budapest Evening Cruise with Entertainment and Drink Options★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 1,272 reviews
Four Budapest bookings that run on somebody else’s calendar.
Most of this city can be sorted over breakfast on the day. These four cannot: they run on timed entry, a concert schedule, or a season that lasts six weeks.
- 01Parliament Building Entry Ticket and Audio GuideThe building can only be entered on a guided tour at a fixed time, and the English-language slots go before the rest.
- 02Organ Concert in St. Stephen’s BasilicaRecitals run on set evenings under the dome, not nightly, so the date decides this one rather than the other way round.
- 03Budapest Christmas Market Tour with Basilica visit & Chimney cakeThe markets stand from the middle of November to the first days of January. Outside that window there is nothing to walk around.
- 04Opera House Guided TourThe house fits visits around rehearsals and performances, so the tour times are few, fixed and published well in advance.
From November the terraces shut and the city moves indoors.
Winter here is long, grey and properly cold, and the open-deck boats and courtyard tables stop being fun. The city is built for it: thermal water, a covered market, cellar restaurants, concert halls and a cave system that sits at the same temperature all year.
The Danube Bend, an hour north of the city.
The river swings hard west then south between two ranges of hills, and three towns sit in the turn: Szentendre with its Serbian churches and galleries, Visegrád under its citadel, Esztergom under the biggest basilica in the country. All doable in a day, by coach or by boat.
Castle Hill, a boat, the baths, the market, the bars: the order that works.
Castle Hill
The baths
The Market Hall
District VII
SzentendreBy landmark — the places people come for
By kind of day — boat, bath, table or bar
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