Budapest Travel Forum

Thanks for the replies to the question about driving from Prague to Budapest, I will be making the same drive in July. Would it be better to visit Karlovy Vary or Cesky Krumlov? There will be 5 of us in our group; are there any good apartments or hotels in Budapest that we can book for a reasonable price? My friend has supposedly (through a friend of his) booked us an accommodation at the Artotel. I've heard it's nice, but he booked through a friend and I'm not feeling confident, know what I mean? Thanks, Johnny

I'm an American professor with Hungarian roots and my wife and I rent three apartments we own in Budapest to tourists (see http://forum.virtualtourist.com/discussion-388021-1-1-Travel-0-436839-Budapest-discussion.html); we're pretty much entirely booked for July and in any event I wouldn't post to hype our own places...forums like this one are far better served by hearing from those who stay in the apartments than those who rent them out.

Having said that, though, this is plainly not our major revenue source and we are doing this because we love the city so much and want to share our enthusiasm and help others have as much pleasure in Budapest as we do...we have a website about the city at http://everythingbudapest.eu and we have a website devoted to our apartments which includes descriptions and links to places we have stayed in, know the owners and managers, and recommend:

<http://www.budapestvacationrentals.com/Three_Very_Special_Apartments_in_the_Heart_of_Budapest/Our_Friends.html>

Among hotels, check out the new Hotel Gerloczy, a small (18 room) boutique hotel in the very center of the city (one block from Deak ter). Rooms rent for 85 Euros per night plus a required 10 Euor/person breakfast charge.

http://gerloczy.hu

The place is owned by a fascinating guy, Tamas Nagy, who has in a small but powerful way done a tremendous amount to quietly push the envelope of food and hospitality in Budapest. He started by being the first to bring imported cheeses into the city, opening a small and lovely shop on Gerloczy utca, selling mostly French cheeses and olives and very good (for Budapest) house-baked breads.

He now supplies pretgty much the entire imported cheese market in Budapest hotels and restaurants (you can see his small refrigerated trucks tooling around the city).

He then opened a small Bistro -- the Cafe Gerloczy -- around the corner from the cheese shop, and it's on the chew.hu Top33 restaurants in the city and remains a lovely place to sit from 7:00am or so until late evening. The food is quite good, the ambience welcoming, the music in the evening (generally a harp) not intrusive and pleasant and the feel of the place utterly civilized. It was and is a local hangout, but has been found by the guidebooks and also has lots of foreign visitors as well. It was a location for several scenes in Steven Spielberg's Munich in which it passed very convincingly as a Parisian sidewalk cafe.

He next opened a salami shlop across the street, and had the temerity to feature primarliy Italian and other imported charcuterie; the shop does less business than the chesse shop or cafe, but is also lovely and, again, is fitting a unique (if coals-to-newcastle) niche (in this city of sausages, there's not many places you can get prosciutto sliced to order, an d sliced with skill).

Last month he finished renovating the building that houses the Cafe into a small hotel, and it looks lovely. I have made a reservation for July myself for a couple of nights, but I've walked around a bit when I was in Budapest last week. It's just breaking in, and it flows seamlessly into the Cafe, but it has the same quiet warmth and overall good taste that everything Nagy touches has. It's worth considering.

My partner and I stayed in a nice , large apartment in the city center, at http://www.budapestaccommodation.net/budapest_apartment_4.htm . the apartment was big for the two of us, but it was great. free wireless and all bed linen. the only problem was that we had to pay in cash, and only cash. but otherwise the service, breakfast, and owner was very helpful.

I was in Artotel the past month. It is very nice an a good deal. Easy transportation (incluiding walking) to the most important attractions.