Things to do in Budapest
But we’re all for kicking bucket lists to the kerb – especially when visiting cities like Budapest, where tourists tread a well-walked route, but rarely venture beyond. The best vacations give you a couple nights in Budapest in the hands of an expert guide, plus the option to extend your stay (you’ll want to, we promise).
Keep reading our Budapest guide to find out how everything from your guides and transport options to timings and dinner choices can affect your experience of Budapest – for you and the people who live there.
Our Hungary Vacations
Northern Hungary luxury villas
Eco-friendly luxury amidst scenic beauty.
Prague to Budapest cycling vacation
A wonderfully contrasting ride through the heart of Europe
Bird watching tours in Hungary
Visit Bukk N.P. with a birding specialist
Danube cycling vacation, self guided
Discove the compelling history of the Danube
Bird watching short break to Hungary
Visit Bukk National Park with a birding specialist
Highlights of Central Europe tour
Experience the incredible highlights of Central Europe
Balkan group tour
A 2 week adventure through Eastern Europe's hidden gems!
South Eastern Europe motorcycle tours
Enjoy South Eastern Europe with friendly guides + good bikes
Budapest to Venice tour
Experience the best of Hungary, Italy and the Balkans
Eastern Europe tour by rail
Cities, scenery & coasts: Travel from Berlin to the Balkans!
Budapest to Bucharest tour
Explore Eastern Europe's Hungary and Romania
Vienna to Budapest cycle ride, self guided
Enjoy rides along the Danube from Austria to Hungary
Highlights of Eastern Europe vacation
discover Krakow, Budapest, Bratislava, Vienna and Prague
Balkan adventure vacation, 15 days
From Hungary through to Croatia
Eastern europe by train, the Iron Curtain tour
Whizz around Europe's lesser-visited cities by rail!
Eastern Europe small group tour
Explore the best of Eastern Europe's least visited regions
Vienna to Budapest tour
Travel five countries for memories to last a lifetime
How to get the best out of Budapest
Book a small group or tailor made vacation
You’ll also be put up in small hotels that the big coach trips can’t reach: family-run B&Bs that give you the chance to swap buffet dinners for Art Nouveau markets and riverside picnics. Budapest is so cheap that it’s totally affordable to stay right in the center, where rooms retain details like high ceilings, fancy fireplaces and courtyard gardens.
Avoid the crowds


Emma Nelson, from our small group adventure specialists Tucan Travel, says: “The most popular bath, Szechenyi, was all tourists the last time I went. And then I went to Gellert, and it’s also a hotel, and it was a lot quieter. But it’s completely seasonal. I think in the middle of winter, all the spas would probably be full of locals. It’s a Catch 22, isn’t it, because the most beautiful things are always going to be the most popular.”
The high season (July to August) isn’t always the best time to see Budapest, anyway. Go in April, when the trees billow with pink blossom – a counterpart for the empty grey-stone ramparts of Castle Hill. Or in October, when the Buda Hills put on their coppery autumn coat.
Choose your river cruise wisely – or not at all
Use public transport


Eat & drink like a Hungarian
Hungarian bars are pretty good at supporting their own wine industry. A great tour guide will point you towards places with wine lists that look beyond classic Tokajis and Bull’s Bloods to the fruity Juhfarks (‘sheep’s tail’, after the shape of the vines) and Fekete Jardovany (a rare, smoky red).
Learn about Budapest’s Holocaust history
It’s a deeply dark part of Budapest’s history that many tourists don’t think about beyond popping by the poignant Shoes on the Danube sculpture. Get yourself on a walking tour of the Jewish Quarter that describes the ghetto before and after World War II. Go to the Dohany Street Synagogue – the biggest synagogue outside New York City – which was only spared because the Nazis used it as a radio tower. These are things that absolutely need to be understood with a guide. You’ll also learn about the people behind the numbers and the diplomats who arranged false documentation to help tens of thousands of people escape.
Our top Hungary Vacation
Bird watching tours in Hungary
Visit Bukk N.P. with a birding specialist
This tour can be tailor made for any date throughout the year except November
Make for the Buda Hills
There’s a world beyond Pest, the busy eastern half of Budapest: namely, Buda which rises up on the west side of the Danube. Before it married with Pest in 1873, it was a separate city and the HQ of the Kingdom of Hungary. Castle Hill and the Liberty Statue writhe with tourists, but right next door Gellert-Hegy lines up secret staircases, gut-punch viewpoints and serpentine paths that coach crowds won’t follow.Don’t forget the Buda Hills, either, which are barely a blip on international tourists’ radar. Here, you can enter the topsy-turvy world of the Children’s Railway, where 10- to 14-year-olds are ticket sellers and conductors. Wolf’s Meadow Cemetery is a leafy resting place for Hungarians ranging from the great composer Bela Bartok to authoritarian Stalinist leader Matyas Rakosi. Memento Park is where the Communist monuments in Budapest were banished to; it’s a sculptural debate about dictatorships and democracy.
Get out of town
Like Prague and Dubrovnik before it, you won’t really understand Budapest until you see it in context. That’s why 90 percent of vacations to Hungary swing by neighbouring Austria, Romania, Poland and Croatia too – countries with land that once sat within Hungary’s indecisive borders. Budapest has shifted and reshifted boundaries, too, now a jigsaw of the cities of Buda, Obuda and Pest.Vivien Urban, from our adventure travel specialists Exodus Travels:
“As a Hungarian myself, I think that Budapest is definitely acknowledged for its beauty and vibe... But there is more to this country than just the capital itself.”
You’ll need to follow in the footsteps of a tour guide who knows Budapest right down to its bones, which any great responsible vacation company will match you up with. That way, you’ll learn about Eastern Europe and how Budapest sits within it. You’ll get a chance to absorb shared histories and understand the differences. You’ll learn about how 150 years of Ottoman rule gave Budapest domed bath houses and the national foodstuff paprika, and see how the Bull’s Blood and Olaszrizling poured in Budapest’s wine bars is concocted in Eger. You’ll soon see that much of what makes Budapest Budapest comes from outside the city limits.