A last minute break to Budapest

My husband, daughter and I recently went a last minute short break to Budapest. We were inspired to visit as both sons went to Budapest (separately) earlier this year and it looked amazing on TV during the World Championship Athletics (which my younger son went to watch). We decided to book it on 13th October and went on 23rd October, at the start of my daughter’s half term.

We’ve been lucky to have a few short breaks this year. They suddenly become more affordable when you only have one ‘child’ to take with you, rather than three. We did a BA City Break, which is surprisingly good value. The three of us had three nights in a four star hotel, including flights, for £350 per person. On top of that, we paid for airport parking (and kennels for Hetty). As we had a 7:30am flight from Heathrow, we also decided to stay at an airport hotel the night before, at the total cost of just £60.

The flight time to Budapest is approximately 2 hours and 2o minutes. It was slightly shorter on the way there and slightly longer on the way back.

We got an airport express bus into the city, which worked out at about £5 per person. The airport is about 10 miles from the city centre and the journey took just over half an hour. It wasn’t the easiest ride, as the bus was very crowded and we were standing, trying to control a heavy wheeled suitcase every time the driver slammed his brakes on (which was often!).

Budapest is the capital of Hungary. It is made up of two separate cities – Buda and Pest (pronounced Pesht) on opposite sides of the River Danube. We stayed on the Pest side, very close to the river.

The average daytime temperature in Budapest in October is 16C, so it is a few degrees warmer than the UK. It actually hit 21C in the afternoon one day, which was very pleasant.

On the day we arrived, it was a bank holiday, so a lot of things were closed, particularly mainstream, non-tourist shops. There were also quite a few tourist attractions closed after that. It turns out that the bank holiday marks the start of the winter season, when some attractions close down until the spring. Travelling with just one teenager, this wasn’t something that bothered us too much. It might explain why the holiday was such good value! There were still a lot of tourists around – mainly couples in their 20s or retired couples and some groups of friends in their 20s.

Th majority of tourists seemed to be British and local people mainly spoke some English in the hotel, shops, restaurants etc. Hungarian isn’t an easy language to translate – it bears no resemblance to either French or German – but a lot of signs were in English too. As is the case with many European cities, English is a common language – so the Hungarians will converse with, for example, Japanese tourist in English because it is a second language for both.

When it comes to eating, drinking, shopping and visiting attractions, Budapest is slightly cheaper than the UK. I suspect if you leave the tourist areas and head further into Hungary, the price difference would be more noticeable.

There is plenty of choice of places to eat and you can find most sorts of cuisine, including pizzas, burgers and noodles! We didn’t have any traditional goulash, as I’m a vegetarian. We did try a couple of traditional foods though – langos and chimney cakes. Langos is a traditional fried bread – kind of like a fried Yorkshire pudding. It is topped a bit like a pizza, but the toppings are cold, more like a sandwich. It is delicious! Although we were served it without cutlery or napkins, which made it hard to eat. A chimney cake is a bit like a donut, but in the shape of a chimney (it is hollow and the actual cake is quite thin). It can be eaten on its own or with a filling, such as ice cream, whipped cream or Nutella. I went big with the fillings, which is most unlike me!

Finding vegetarian food in Budapest was pretty easy, but it was very cheese-based, so I suspect finding vegan food would be a lot harder.

The currency is the Hungarian forint (usually abbreviated to HUF). There are approximately 440HUF to the £. Some prices are also quoted in Euros and some bigger attractions will accept payment in Euros. Unlike Lisbon, which we visited earlier this year, card payments seem to be accepted everywhere, so we didn’t get any cash out. The only issue was public toilets, which have to be paid in cash, so we didn’t use any public toilets! Toilets in coffee shops and restaurants usually have a code on the door, so that customers can use them for free.

As we only had two full days, plus the start of one day and the end of another, we didn’t have as much time as we would have liked in Budapest. We had time to see a lot of things from the outside, but not to visit them all. Ideally, I think we needed one extra night.

I’ll write about what we did in Budapest in my next post…