Budapest Travel Forum

Hi there,
I'm from Toronto Ontario, and looking to get some general information about Budapest. My husband is going to be in Budapest, starting August 18th or so, for 9 weeks. We have a 1 year old son, and we would really like to accompany him on this exciting trip.

Accommodations will be taken care of (just not sure exactly where in the city yet). Basically just looking for an idea of things to do, language spoken, friendly city? Foods to try, currency, places to shop, etc. Just normal every day stuff, since we'll be doing normal every day stuff...for NINE weeks!

Since we're bringing our son, does anyone know of certain "department" type stores that may have a website, so we can get baby gear, ie. stroller, high chair, or perhaps used goods stores? Just so we don't have to lug everything from Canada on the flight over. Just want all our bases covered.

Any info/advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading and take care,
Erin

Hi Budapest is a modern city on the Danube river. We had 7 days there in October 2005. You will find large shopping centres with supermarkets and plenty of smaller shops in the centres, just the same as you would experience at home. As for English we had no problems, nearly all people under 40 years of age speak it. ATM's are everywhere, just put your card in and the local money comes out, at that time they had not changed to Euro, but it could have changed since then

Public transport is good, we used trams most of the time, but also the metro one time.We found the city safe, but if dining keep away from the tourist areas such as Vacci UTCA as they charge twice as much.

You can travel to Vienna by train in 3 hours and reasonably priced if you purchase your ticket in Budapest. I envy you as you have a great opportunity to see the surrounding former eastern block countries controlled by Soviet Union.

You are welcome to view my Budapest and other pages, hopefully it may give you some idea of the city. Just click on my photo/name and you will come to my home page, on the right side you will see my pages listed, click on more.

Good Luck,
Mike

You will have plenty of things to do in Budapest. Check my Budapest tips as it may take pages to write here. Language spoken is Hungarian, younger generation is likely to know English and older generation German. It is a friendly city and people are very friendly too. You may face some language barrier as you may get frustrated sometimes when you can't communicate. Hungarian cuisine is based on meat and wherever you go, big portions will be served and meals are quite heavy but very delicious. Goose liver is one of the must-trys. Gulyas soup and bean soup are not to miss.For restaurants, also refer to my tips. Currency is Hungarian Forint and this is an advantage as there happens to be an increase in prices when countries switch to Euro. Hungary won't switch to Euro before 2010. There are some shopping malls and touristic streets such as Vaci utca and Andrassy utca, Erzsebet Korut where you can find a lot of shops. For your son, you can find all equipment and accessories required from shopping malls or big hypermarkets such as Tesco or Cora. Drop me a message if you need more information. Enjoy Budapest :)

The currency is called Forint.

I would suggest, if you dont mind paying for help, that you go to the website Helpers.hu. They provide all sorts of services for just such an occasion. Kind of an "we do anything for a buck" company. Go to the contacts page and write Barbara.