We just got back from our vacation to Central Europe, which started in Budapest July 1-5. This board was a great source of information while planning, so I wanted to share a few specifics that may help others. My family of 3 (mom, dad, 17 year old son) packed so much into our time there and we all really, really enjoyed the city.
We landed in Budapest at 8:40a and it took us about 1.5 hours from deplaning to exiting the airport, most of which was spent in line for the EES process.
We had pre-purchased tickets to Parliament, one of which was a non-EU student ticket for my son. We weren’t sure if his US high school ID would suffice, but no one asked to see it. In fact, during our entire trip (through Austria and Germany), not one ticket seller/taker asked to see a student ID when buying/using student tickets.
When taking local transit, inspectors checked our tickets about half the time, often at the top of escalators before boarding the metro, but also on the trains/trams themselves.
We had a mishap with the debit card we normally use to withdraw cash with no fee at foreign ATMs, but wanted to have some HUF on hand for markets, smaller shops, and tipping a tour guide, so rather than use an ATM card that would have charged 3% + $5 for a withdrawal, we exchanged dollars at Correct Change on Szent Istvan Krt. We thought their fee was fair at 0.9% and the rate at which they bought dollars was much closer to the daily published rate (i.e. higher) than any other exchange booth we saw for the duration of the trip. All in all, it cost less than $1 to exchange $60 USD to HUF and they were accommodating with giving us small denominations.
We stayed at the Ambra Hotel in a Suite, which was the same price as a Triple Room when we booked, and it we loved it! Absolutely quiet, AC, lovely staff, great breakfast, and great location for us.
We booked a 9:40p Danube River cruise on Legenda on the morning of Jul 2 for the night of Jul 3. If you want to sit on top in the open air, get to the docks early, as seating is first come, first served. I can't say for sure, but I think different boats had different amounts of seating on top and the one we were on didn't seem to have as much as others.
For those traveling with kids/teenagers, we all had fun searching out Kolodko mini statues. In fact, the night before we left, I saw a post on social media that a new statue had just been installed not too far from our hotel, so we set our alarms early to swing by and see it before we left. Another thing we did on our last day there, once we had ticked off our “must-see” sights, was visit the Flippermuzeum. With entry, you get unlimited play on all sorts of pinball machines and other vintage video games. It was an fun break in the day for us!
We used Sidetrip Tours to get from Budapest to Vienna. We enjoyed this very much, had a great guide, and really liked seeing some smaller towns between the two cities. One thing, though. If you want to do a group tour, they won’t run with less than four people. They were very up front and let us know that our tour was not guaranteed unless someone else signed up. They gave us the option to pay for the fourth slot, to guarantee it would run, and if other people signed up, they would refund us the amount for the fourth slot.
Hopefully this is helpful and if anyone has follow-up or other questions, I am happy to share our experiences!