Have breakfast at the Fisherman's Bastion
Agreed, this may not be the freshest idea, but it's definitely a safe bet. And anyway: how can you visit Budapest and not look at the fantastic panorama of the city that opens from the hilly part of Buda? If weather permits, it's worth heading straight to the Fisherman's Bastion, built at the beginning of the 20th century. Climbing the northern tower, you can have a cup of coffee while admiring the bridges, the curve of the Danube, and Pest.
We continue exploring Buda: here is the oldest (11th century) and repeatedly rebuilt Matthias Church, and a little further – the palace quarter, which houses the palace itself, the National Gallery, and museums of general and military history. You can go down by funicular, opened back in 1870.
Watch Hungarian horses
The park named after Zoltán and Vilmos Lázár – multiple world champions in horseback riding – is located 35 kilometers from Budapest in the village of Domonyvölgy. After a welcoming shot of pálinka, guests are shown an impressive horse show featuring Hungarian breeds – black-maned Nonius and snow-white Lipizzaners (by the way, they are also born black and only lighten after eight years).
Then you can gawk at the numerous awards of the Lázár brothers and carriages for various types of competitions – all collected under one roof. In a small zoo nearby live geese, goats, cute Hungarian hunting dogs (Puli), and a woolly Mangalica pig – this breed was developed in the 19th century and spread around the world. The park hosts a variety of events: team building, concerts, horseback riding lessons, and even safaris on GAZ-66 trucks.
Visit Lake Hévíz
If you have time, it makes sense to visit Hévíz – a small resort town two and a half hours' drive from Budapest. Here, in the crater of an extinct volcano, there is a lake with healing water rich in magnesium, calcium, and sulfur. Its temperature never drops below 23 degrees.
In the crater, people take mud baths, get wraps, and simply swim among lotuses and water lilies – they were specially brought here from Egypt and India. After improving your health, we go to see Roman ruins. The ancient Romans lived here from the 1st to the 5th century. You can stay overnight. Tourism is the main and only industry of Hévíz, so accommodation here is for every taste, from budget two-star to luxury complexes like Lotus Therme.
Go to a culinary school
Hungarian dishes are not the simplest to cook, but they are among the most delicious. To make Hungarian rétes (or simply strudel), you need particularly thin and strong dough. You can read a newspaper through such dough. However, classic goulash soup is doable even for a beginner. You will see this at the Chefparade cooking school. It has several premises in Budapest itself and a cozy house surrounded by a vineyard in the village of Etyek, 30 kilometers from the city.
Classes are held in the mornings. A tourist group is offered to split into teams and prepare a three-course lunch for themselves. All ingredients and recipes are provided on site. You can also taste and purchase local wines here. It's better to book the excursion in advance through the school's website.
Admire the library of Festetics Palace
In the town of Keszthely near Lake Balaton, one of the most luxurious estates in Hungary is located. It once belonged to the powerful Festetics family, major local landowners. This castle was built in 1745 in Baroque style and had thirty-four rooms, but at the end of the 19th century it was expanded three times. As usual, the family nest is full of antique furniture from different eras, portraits of dynasty members, and various curious trifles. But the pearl of the castle is its library, the oldest private book collection in Hungary, with rare editions of Boccaccio's Decameron and Dante's Divine Comedy, sheet music with Haydn's autograph, and many other rarities.
The library miraculously avoided looting by marauders during World War II. In the spring of 1945, it was discovered by Red Army Major Ilya Shevchenko. Recognizing the immense cultural value of the collection, he ordered the windows and doors of the room with books to be bricked up, writing on them in Russian and Hungarian: "Do not enter. Chemical contamination zone!" As a result, the library has survived to this day and is now open to scholars and students.
Go to a concert at the club ship
Once the vessel "Artemovsk-38" belonged to Ukraine and was used for transporting stone. The ship's second life began in 2003 when it moored on the banks of the Danube – four enterprising young people turned it into a real cultural center. Now there is a concert hall for 700 people, a restaurant, a TV studio, and a small exhibition gallery.
The music program is put together by the same promoters who run the well-known summer festival Sziget, so everything here is quite diverse: from the venerable metallers Deerhunt to the refined French jazz trumpeter Erik Truffaz. Bonus – view of Pest and the evening Danube.
Buy local delicacies
Locals joke: "In Hungary, the best wine in the world is made, but no one except Hungarians knows about it." Of course, this primarily refers to muscats and Tokaji Aszú, which have been famous throughout Europe since the 18th century. Among stronger drinks, it is worth mentioning 35-proof pálinka brandy, which is distilled from various fruits – pears, apricots, apples. Also the bitter called Unicum, infused with several dozen herbs.
Hungarians are great experts in meat products, so leaving Budapest without taking a couple of sticks of local salami with noble white mold is simply blasphemy. The easiest place to buy everything at once is at the Central Market, built at the end of the 19th century. You can haggle and pay in cash, or with a plastic card.