Budapest Off-Season Tour - Ten Tips for First Time Travelers -- October in Hungary- more affordable and less crowded...things to know before you go
October, especially an unseasonably warm one, has distinct advantages for visiting Budapest —mainly avoiding peak season crowds and peak season prices.
With eyes of first time visitors to Budapest during off-season, we share the following tips—all are aspects of a Budapest tour we would have wanted to be able to picture before landing there
-
Numerous Ways to Get Oriented and Get Around—all with Pros and Cons
Guidebooks outline various options to get from airport to city center. It’s even easier than they make it sound. The shuttle bus service, for example, has painted a food path that shows you how to walk to and from ticket counter to bus queue. The return shuttle ordered for the wee hours of the morning arrived on time.
On foot, or hop on and off bus, by train or tram, and Danube River cruises—there are many ways to get around Budapest to soak up its feel and get a quick fix on what’s where.
There are many free walking tours—the docents work for tips. Alas, our guide, in this writer’s view, though nice and knowledgeable, was more tired than enthused, perhaps having given the same rap a tad too many times. There was a plus side to his fatigue—as he was eager to point out the lesser known outdoor escalators and elevators that take you up to the museums and heights of Buda Castle. Worth two hours of your time? Maybe—the quality of the tour is going to be luck of the draw.
There are many variants of hop on and off tour buses. They seem equivalent- in their offerings and service, though if you are waiting long enough for “your” bus don’t be surprised if a commission-paid agent for another company purposely chats you up to suggest that you picked the lemon low service option.
On a lovely sunny day it’s quiet grand to sit in the open air bus. You’ll get a headset – only one, you can’t lose it-- that plays music by Hungarian composers and is spiced with short factoids about spots the buses are going past, apparently triggered by some geo markers . If you take the same route more than once you too will likely be eager to shed the annoying ear buds, as the information is quite thin. For avid walkers without physical disability however, the big downside of these buses is lost time on queues waiting for the next bus.
If you adjust expectations of the boat cruises, and especially if you venture at dusk, taking a Danube River cruise is a recommended way to take in the city’s beauty. You get to see the huge scale of the Parliament building, look up on high to Buda Castle, see bridges you will or have walked over from a different vantage point and more. As the night descends the magical feeling peaks. Here too there is a factoid patter interspersed in Hungarian music over loudspeakers that is relatively missable, and a high likelihood that your beer and wine swigging fellow passengers will assure you miss it.
Buses, trains and trams—the public transportation system is clean and efficient. Signs in English make transitions relatively smooth. Armed with a Maps App on your phone you will be able to get anywhere at any hour.
With 20-20 hindsight, it’s easy to see that putting a food tour at the front of the trip would be a quick orientation to place as well as culture. (Read our review – “Budapest TASTE HUNGARY FOOD TOUR Review – Food Coma Budapest Style”.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpbQoaWKgU
-
English is everywhere – you are a spoiled American here as elsewhere
-
Annoyances are few—smoking is number one
You won’t be spending a lot of energy watching your back. This is a safe city and it feels that way. You won’t be worried about people cheating you. You can relax. Better, you can turn the phone GPS off to wander into neighborhoods just slightly off the well-trod tourist paths. This is where you will likely feel Budapest’s true charms strongest.
As in other European cities, smoking is a persistent annoyance. You’ll find yourself eyeing fellow patrons of outdoor cafes and restaurants to size them up as smokers or not before you sit. You’ll find you just can’t get away.
-
Budapest Card- -- great deal!
Prices might change and apparently the sites bundled into the package change too, but it’s likely that you will want to get a 3-day or a 120-hour Budapest Card that will also cover your public transportation costs. You can buy it on the street and many other locations in the central Budapest tourist ghetto. Decide on the card start time—it can be another day, another hour.
-
Budapest won’t break your budget—at least in the off-season
If you want to save money while traveling you won’t find Budapest akin to many places in Southeast Asia.
That said, counting the beds in our Airbnb, we realized the bill per head for a large family or a group of backpacker friends might be as low as US$6/day. Super budget-conscious can mine groceries for food deals and comfortably get by for less than $10/day.
Though you can find pricey gourmet options for fine dining, the prices seem to be half of what a comparable meal might be in the likes of New York City, Paris or London.
Museums aren’t dirt cheap, but it’s not like you are going to a long list of MOMA-priced museums in New York City.
-
Wine--- you can’t go wrong.
Long before we had a chance to do a wine tasting rolled into a food tour, it became quite obvious that the quality of Hungarian wine you get in Budapest far exceeds the range of Hungarian wines one might be exposed to in a typical US wine superstore. This is wine country, though much for the beer drinkers too. Very inexpensive wines in groceries do not disappoint and never gave headaches. It is easy to navigate labels to find wines that are sweet or dry.
-
Food— easy to navigate to your palate
Hungarian cuisine is not ideal for dieters. Most Americans won’t be thrilled to find a horsemeat option on a food tour sampling plate. This is a meat eaters paradise. Indeed, for the more vegetarian inclined, expect to notice the long lunch queues at one of the spanking new vegan places in the tourist ghetto.
If you too lose your taste for Hungarian heavy dishes in rapid order ,know that there are countless alternatives. Like most world-class cities, you will find the usual selection from sushi to pizza to noodles. You too might begin cataloguing the Turkish fast food spots in walking distance from where you are--- cheap and ubiquitous, they have many dishes that lead with vegetables instead of meat.
Better, make a mental map of the cafes in walking distance. If you stick to Starbucks you not only will miss out on historic café culture but pay twice as much.
-
High culture without high cost
An October visit affords a chance to catch opera, dance, concerts, art shows, and even circus events and more that are part or concomitant with the fortnight+ cultural festival called CAFeBUDAPEST. Don’t expect to find permutations on these cultural offerings that somehow feel uniquely Hungarian. Do expect attractive venues and relatively affordable prices–again, in comparison to other US or European cities—for world-class talents.
Budapest MUPA Concert Hall-- Easy to Get to, easy to enjoy
Even better, keep an eye out for free concerts like organ recitals in churches that are easy access mental health breaks from museum fact piling overloads.
-
Museums are mixed bags
Building and rehab was ubiquitous during an October, 2018 visit, explained as related to a pending EU budget deadline. Closed also were some of the museums and sites we had shortlisted for visits after studying guidebooks. As in other cities, it is best to check online or check with concierge services- -make sure that you don’t waste time traveling to museums whose hours have changed or that are shut down for rehab.
If you are a museum lover, from this writer’s perspective, a warning is in order. With notable exceptions such as the docents at the historic synagogue, many of the museum exhibits seemed in need of curators with a sense of meta-description and ability to spin narratives that provide cohesion to tours. This was especially the case in the National History Museum, but it was more the case than not that museum placards began to read like the drone of a fact spewing bore. A story teller with panache could go a long way to enriching a typical Budapest museum tour.
-
Getting a handle on the political scene is elusive, at least for non-Hungarian speakers
How fascinating to learn that Hungary’s Trump equivalent ran on the slogan of “Make Hungary Great Again!” a decade ago! For someone hailing from a city like Chicago, Budapest does seem painfully white and vanilla.
Yet, the adage of “..the more you learn the more you realize how little you know” seems especially apt.
You look at the tour maps identifying the historic Jewish area and you note that your docent’s business card on the food tour leads with “Traditional Hungarian Jewish Cuisine”, and you also go on the high-energy tour of the synagogue restored with the help of movie star Tony Curtiss and beauty business icon Estee Lauder, and you begin to think that Budapest has made peace with its holocaust history. Then, in the vast Hungarian National History Museum, you can only find a small an exhibit showing the requisite Star of David uniform worn by Jews in a low and out of view showcase that strikes as closer to bread box sized than amphitheater scale as many other exhibits seem. Similarly , while you note that there is great pride in the many Hungarian composers who flank the opera hall and whose Gypsy tune rich works you hear as background on the bus and boat tours, any reference to Roma people is so hidden that it was missed. Which is it? you wonder….
Take a trip to Memento Park where socialist icon statues are sequestered and treasure the description of how and why the design for this park was chosen--- an admirable contemplation on how a culture should deal with a troubled past. And then start noticing the chi chi mansions on the Buda side heights and haughty looks of upscale patrons at the opera in MUPA and wonder how such a deep and clearly visible class divide developed so quickly. Wasn’t this just a communist country a few minutes ago?
One could learn the Hungarian tongue and read to answer this and other questions about the undercurrents of Hungarian society before you travel and that would be the wise course. Or, perhaps you could make friends with knowledgeable Hungarians whom you trust to explain all and answer these American-context questions.
Or, perhaps, like these time-pressed travelers, while in Budapest just ponder these questions over a bottle of good Hungarian wine and resolve to go to school upon return from vacation.
Read related Picture this Post Budapest Tour stories--
Budapest TASTE HUNGARY FOOD TOUR Review – Food Coma Budapest Style
CAFeBudapest Presents HUNGARIAN NATIONAL BALLET TRIPLE DANCE Review- Another Window on World Dance
CAFeBUDAPEST Presents CANDIDE Review – Experiencing the Classic in New Way
