My family is planning to visit Budapest this coming October- November 2010. Is it worth to travel far and see this place? Is it really nice in Budapest? What places to you recommend for me to see here? :)

I absolutely LOVE Budapest. Its such a beautiful city with so much charm and soul.

Definitely visit the castle district. Also, you may want to experience one of the many thermal baths - very soothing and relaxing and a very Hungarian thing to do.


Here's the Budapest Tourism webpage with loads more ideas:
http://www.budapestinfo.hu/en/

And as an FYI, if you are taking the subway there and you see the doors starting to close do NOT try to squeeze in - the door slam closed violently. They show up often enough anyway, so not worth injuries to try and catch one that's about to leave.

Agree!! beautiful charming place. We visited and stayed at the Four Seasons with a view of the blue river danube. I would recommend eating at Gundel's restaurant, watching an opera, visiting the marketplace and wine tasting underground. St. Andrews is a small touristy area outside of Budapest that has lots of cute touristy shops. A quaint little town.

There is a medieval restaurant, that is a real must. The food is so yummy, and the whole set-up is very entertaining http://www.sirlancelot.hu/index.php?lang=en

Its a good idea to make reservation in advance :)

I would recommend the Castle Hill, Szentendre (as mentiond before St Andrews), there are lots of churches and chapels (e.g.-Matthias Church -Mátyás Templom - on the Castle Hill, St Stephan Basilic - Szent István Bazilika- in the city . A very nice part of the city is Óbuda- Old Buda- where you can find several ruins from the Roman age, and nice pubs, too. The Margaret Island - Margit sziget- is in the heart of the city which is a big park. If you like shopping you can visit Váci utca. In Hősök tere- you can find museums (e.g.- Museum of Fine Arts ).

Budapest is very charming and not so expensive. But it is actually quite small! I would recommend visiting other cities in the area, maybe even Prague.

I'm bumping this one up.
Can anyone give any recs for good restaurants? I'm going with my parents and they don't want anything fancy. Good food but without the white linen tables.

We really liked Menza: Liszt Ferenc Ter 2 ( at Franz Liszt Square). Lots of locals eat there and the decor is cool: kinda retro, oranges and such. Prices are very reasonable.

There is also a really yummy falafel joint right outside the Jewish museum, but I don't recall the name.

Have fun!

I also want to second the big park - there are some really cool sculptures there...and sooo many dogs! dH and I are dog lovers and we were amazed that almost all the dogs we saw were off leash. (i know, random, but all the sites were already mentioned).

I was there last christmas and it's really beautiful especially at night. The castle hill that everyone mentioned I think is the Buda Castle. The one that in Katy Perry's Firework music video. LOL. Anyway, you should try their dish the fish soup and their pastry.