Favorites:
Attend the Opera, the building and the performances are fantastic. Seats $55-$70 but cheap on the top tier. Note that rear corner seats do not have video translation displays, if your Italian or German is rusty. Actually the front row may not either. Reading display with progressive lenses a challenge. Marvel at full curtain calls after every act. Do a web search on packing a sport coat and not wrinkling it (roll it up inside out). Don’t be a gauche (mostly European) tourist and wear blue jeans.
Go to a spa. We chose Lukacs Baths which is just north of the convenient 4/6 trams on the Buda side. Good price at $12, higher Sat/Sun. Mostly not tourists, both fun and interesting.
Enjoy the riverfront day and night, it’s scenic and has a buzz. Hike up hills on the Buda side for the view. Paying for admissions not needed for satisfying time. Ride a river cruise at night, a bit pricey at $24. The trams run up and down both sides of the riverfront. There must be a way to make a big circle with combining several trams, surprised guidebooks don’t give directions. Buildings turn off floodlights about 11 pm.
Enjoy the month first then day date format as used in the US, not the goofy day/month/year format used elsewhere in Europe (except Lithuania).
Not much of a wine snob but found both the white and red extremely good even when dirt cheap. Getting $3 bottles of wine at the corner Spar and drinking it on the balcony with friends certainly one of the cheapest good times to be had in Europe.
Hero’s Park with it’s 1890s folly of Hungarian and Transylvanian architecture. Climb the new museum that looks like a sunken ship.
Less enthusiastic:
A. Tour the Parliament, $29 for US/UK/CAN. Building is interesting but appears to be brand new/unused, and with all the wall figurines made out of some resin the building has an “It’s a Small World” Disney ride feeling. Actually the whole building has a Disney feel to it. Rub elbows with the loud Viking Cruise people who proclaim, “I would have paid a million dollars to see this.”
B. District 6 is interesting but frankly seedy in many blocks. Many restaurant choices but these were more expensive meals than when in Prague. Many, many young partiers. Could have done without the motorcycles hot rodding it day and night.
C. I hate to downgrade the Great Synagogue but another super high admission, $26, hard to justify. FYI: The late Roman stone with menorah mentioned in the RS book is sitting unlabeled at the landing to the top floor of the museum (top floor closed). Although the Jewish Museum in Prague is similarly priced, that includes 5 synagogues, exhaustive displays, the cemetery, and a week pass to get through it.