We recently spent 7 days in Budapest, June 28 to July 5. Budapest is a fantastic city without the crowds of some other european capitals. I also really enjoyed not seeing a lot of American tourists.
Arrival:
We had flown into Frankfurt from SFO and planned to take the train from Frankfurt to Budapest, a long trip, but i enjoy taking the train. However, after we got to Germany, we heard that the trains had become unreliable at times, and we worried that our 12 minute connection in Munich might be too close.. So we made a last-minute change and decided to fly the next morning instead. A good decision.
Apartment:
We rented an apartment in Budapest with the tour company Untours. Untours provides some services, including airport pickup and dropoff, a pre-stocked fridge, a river cruise, and a transit card for the week. You can also rent the apartment on your own: ( about $150 a night for a one bedroom apt. ) https://novabudapest.com/
We loved it because it faced onto a very leafy courtyard and it was on the 4th floor with a good size balcony. The apartment had a washing machine and a drying rack which fit on the balcony.
Transit:
Because we had the transit pass ($18 for a 15-day pass; i believe that is the minimum time), it was so easy to get around. You do not have to validate it when riding buses or the subway. You may be asked to show it if there are inspectors at the station, which happened a couple of times. Budapest has an extremely good public transport system! - we never took a cab once. There is the subway, trams, and bus transport that covers the whole city and travels on time. Google maps provided the info about departure times, so we could get to a stop at the right time.
Currency: We got about $150 in forints when we arrived - we weren’t sure what the credit/cash options would be. We were able to tap to pay with Google Pay on our phones, or with credit cards almost everywhere. There was one small restaurant that wanted cash, and one small clothing shop, but that was it, so unless you prefer cash, i wouldn’t recommend getting too much.
Itinerary:
Day 1: we walked around taking pictures of the beautiful buildings. For dinner, we had made a reservation at Kiraly 100. https://kiraly100.hu/en/king100restaurant, a recommendation from the Hungary forum. We had an amazing dinner starting with strawberry soup for me (cold fruit soups are a thing in Hungarian cuisine) and then a duck leg with sweet cabbage. My husband had an ‘eggplant cream” which is offered many places, and is the consistency of a baba ghanoush. He followed with a pork tenderloin with mushroom sauce. We also had champagne and wine with dinner for about $65 for both of us, and this was an expensive restaurant. We loved the prices in Budapest. Wine was usually $3 or so a glass.
Day 2: Szechenyi Baths and meetup at Kadarka Wine Bar
The other priority we had besides eating and drinking well - was to check out the Thermal Baths. We made an online reservation for Thursday morning at the Szechenyi baths.
You can book with a locker or a cabin - a cabin is a full dressing room, so we chose that. Admission costs about $35. You do need to bring a towel and flip flops/shower shoes. If you don't have a towel you will need to buy one - they do not rent them. Also if you want to swim in the large swimming pool (not the hot pools) you are required to have a swim cap.
Once you are changed into your suit, you find your way through rooms of indoor pools of different temps and through to the outside pools. You may have seen the Rick Steves budapest episode where he is in an outdoor pool and there is sort of a lazy river in the middle of it - That is Szechenyi baths. It was really nice soaking for a while. Then of course, you can take a break and go to the snack bar for some lunch - goulash or a sandwich,etc.
We found it very relaxing and invigorating!