Satisfied in Hungary

Budapest

The people of Hungary are welcoming and kind, and the city of Budapest is beautiful!  It is bustling with families, students and tourists all year round.  We didn’t come to Budapest because it was on a bucket-list for us but simply because it was a convenient place to stop for a week on our way to meet our friends in Ukraine.  We didn’t really do much research on the city before we arrived, we simply winged it here… and we loved it!

Unlike the other places in Europe we had been where people are more reserved, here the people seemed to welcome you in, as if you were a long lost relative.  We really enjoyed the warmth of the culture and the incredible food here!  Budapest was far less expensive than any of the other places we had visited on the trip so far which was a nice change of pace too.

We loved walking the city, strolling the river-walk here and crossing the beautiful bridges on foot, there are also lots of great public parks to hang out at.  One of our favorite things that we did was rent a scooter for a day and explore, Castle Hill, the Citadel and the Jewish quarter.

Szentendre

One of the days we decided to get out of the city (which we highly recommend when visiting any country) and take a short train ride out to the country.  We came to a little town called Szentendre.  This town is darling!  Full of little  souvenir shops and  cozy restaurants we had a lot of fun exploring it.  We got lunch at a delicious restaurant called, Dear Café Kedves Kávézó and highly recommend it.   After 4-5 hours we decided to take the river ferry back for a change of scenery and less of a bumpy ride.  Visiting Szentendre was a great experience and we would come back next time we visit Hungary.

Where to stay: This is a bit tricky in Budapest, you want to stay near the center but not exactly in it.  Why? Because Budapest is a place where college students come to vacation and party.  We recommend paying up for a nicer hotel here as there will most likely not be rowdy college students there. We usually book through Expedia to get the best deals!

Where to eat:  EVERYWHERE!!! We did not have a bad meal here!  We really enjoyed local run Restaurants for good traditional food, they are everywhere.

What to do:

• Go to the citadel in the evening and watch the sunset then watch the city lights come on, its magical!
• If you are comfortable on scooters, this is a perfect city to rent a scooter and explore. The drivers were not aggressive and were happy to share the road with us.
• Go to castle hill and do a little tour up there. We didn’t do a guided tour we just did a self guided tour on our phones which seemed like enough.
• Do the river-walk on foot! This was almost a daily ritual for us. We loved how the parliament building looked and how the city looked from the other side of the river.
• Visit the parks. They all seem to be dedicated to someone or a memorial to something.  We especially liked visiting the WW2 Memorial park.
• Baths? Well we don’t know.  We were going to do it but after going and seeing them in person, and reading the reviews we decided not to go in the baths.  They didn’t seem to be the cleanest or up-kept very well.

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