Hi there,
When almost everything in the house was fixed, we decided to take a few days of vacation to clear our minds of all the problems we had had with the house in Porto.
I wanted to go to the south of Italy, but the accommodations were horrible and expensive.
We decided on Budapest as it was the cheapest flight and because the hotels seemed decent. Even so, inflation is noticeable because there was no destination that was a bargain either.
In previous years in January, we had found better deals.
We went from January 11 to 16 and we had 4 whole days to visit the city.
As you already saw in the previous post, we booked at the Christina Residence, which is in the Buda part and it was relatively close to the Buda Castle district, where we went the first afternoon.
It should be noted that in winter you have fewer hours of sunshine to visit and in Budapest, at 4:30 p.m., it was already night.
That first afternoon that we went to Buda Castle there were a lot of people and we decided to come back again the next morning to be able to take the photos without people.
The vegan restaurant that was closest to the hotel and the only one in the Buda part that was open for dinner was Édeni Vegán. It closed at 6:00 p.m., so that day we had dinner at 5:00 p.m.
All the restaurants closed at the latest at 8:00 p.m. In the tourist area, they are open at maximum until 10pm.
The first day we toured the Buda area from the Buda Castle district to the Liberty Bridge and since we still had light, we crossed over to the Pest part. That day we walked almost 25km.
The next day we walked towards the Margaret Bridge to take our photo with the Parliament in the background and we crossed there.
This day was full of “free tours” of Spaniards, and it was annoying because in each tourist site, there were many groups.
We got to the Széchenyi Thermal Baths and there we took the subway to return to the hotel.
We discarded this thermal bath because as it is the most famous, we imagined that there would be a lot of people.
That afternoon we asked the hotel receptionist what other city we could visit nearby since in 2 days we had seen all of Budapest. He recommended that we went to Eger.
The train ride to Eger takes 2 hours.
The good thing is that there were no tourists.The city is small and can be seen perfectly in a few hours.
The only vegan restaurant in Eger was closed and no other had vegan options, so we bought at the supermarket and had lunch sitting in a park.
Sunday, as it was supposed to rain, was the day we had reserved to go to the hot springs and visit some museums.
First thing in the morning we went to the Géllert Baths. The entrance costs 27 euros and it has a normal pool, 4 thermal pools and two cold water pools. As of 11am, it got too crowded. The saunas were not working.
I thought I threw the money away because there was nothing to do but soak in hot water. In addition, the complex in general was in a terrible state and it was noticeable that there hasn’t been any maintenance in many years.
We were not disappointed because we already imagined that any thermal bath in Budapest was going to be the typical tourist trap.
We ruled out the museums and the Labyrinth because of the bad reviews we found.
In the afternoon we went to Margaret Island which, although the hotel receptionist had told us that it wasn’t worth it during winter, I liked it because there were only locals doing sports. We went around the island and the atmosphere was super nice and relaxed.
In general, Budapest can be seen in two days, you don’t need more. Although I liked the city, its architecture shows the war and the decadence it left behind. It seemed to me dirtier than other cities like Vienna and Bratislava; it is dirtier than Porto and less dirty than Valencia, for example.
Although the people are polite, they are colder regarding the experiences we had in Vienna, Bratislava, and London. At the train station the staff didn’t even speak English and they yelled things at you in their language. In addition, in few places you found the indications or the signs in English.
Although it was colder, coming from the Porto winter of unstoppable rain, it was a change for the better.
Regarding prices, the Uber, the tickets to the places and even the public transport, were more expensive than in Porto. Food prices in restaurants were similar.
Total expenses for 2 people for 5 nights:
Hotel: 308 euros
Flights: 202 euros
Meals and travel: 337 euros
Vegan restaurants:
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