This post is part of my Traveling Tuesday Series.
Our last Easter while living in Dublin was spent in the beautiful city of Budapest, Hungary. It’s probably not a place that’s on the top of most people’s European itinerary but it was easily one of our favorite places we visited and we definitely hope to return in the future. It was a wonderful family holiday and while our girls may not remember much of it (Honeybun was nearly 4 and Sugarplum was 21 months at the time), it will remain on of our best Easters and family trips.
Here are the basics of traveling to Budapest with kids:
Getting Around
We took the train from Vienna to Budapest through the lovely Austria-Hungarian countryside. It was exciting for the girls to be on the train and a lot less stressful than flying. We walked from the Budapest-Keleti train station to our hotel (in the rain, dragging a screaming Honeybun who was “too tired” to walk the 1/2 mile.)
We spent the rest of our stay in Budapest walking, we never took a bus or tram, everything we did was within about a 30 minute walk from our hotel which was very central to everything.
We flew back to Dublin from the Budapest Ferenc Liszt Airport which we took a taxi to (we had brought the girls’ car seats along for this trip) and got to see some other interesting parts of the city during the cab ride.
Kid Accessibility
We had no trouble getting around Budapest with the girls each in a buggy. The streets are easy to navigate with ample sidewalks and every place we visited was accessible with the girls and their buggies.
Eating in Budapest with kids
Eating in Budapest was one of our favorite things about our visit. We like trying new things and so eating is always one of our favorite parts of traveling, but the deliciousness and inexpensive pricing of food in Budapest made it even more exciting.
One of our favorite places included was at a little hut in the City Park (“Varosliget”) which we stumbled upon one afternoon. We enjoyed live music, great food and an excellent beer and local liqueur selection all at unbeatable prices which prompted Sugarplum to want to dance!
Another place we loved eating a buffet-style restaurant near our hotel that had live traditional music and was cheaper than eating fast food in Dublin (and was the only place one of kids has ever actually fallen backwards in the their chair at a restaurant, right in front of the musicians, of course!)
Preparing for a trip to Budapest with Kids:
I’m big on planning our trips ahead of time because traveling with kids makes things just a little bit more complicated as they aren’t always very patient when you don’t have a plan so I always did a lot of research and planning before our trips. Check out my tips and advice for:
- Finding the perfect hotel
- Pre-Planning as much as possible and finding the best Sights to See
- Packing for the kids
What to see and do in Budapest with Kids:
We were in Budapest for three days and loved every second of it!
We filled our time in Budapest with kids as follows:
Day 1:
Szechenyi Baths
We started our visit to Budapest with kids with a visit to one of the famous baths. Situated in the City Park, the Szechenyi Baths is a series of indoor thermal baths and outdoor pools heated by natural hot springs. It’s a hotel/spa that’s been open for over 100 years and we were just as enchanted by our visit as the girls were!
You can rent towels though I highly recommend bringing your own or buying some cheap ones in the park before entering as the rental towels, though large, are very thin and not at all warm. You can also rent a “cabin” which is more like a small closet, just big enough for one person to turn around in, to change and keep your personal items or there are rental lockers available.
Transport Museum
After our trip to the baths and enjoying our lunch in the park, we headed to the Transport Museum also in the City Park. It wasn’t a huge museum but we all had fun looking at all the different trains, cars, bikes and more. The girls loved being able to climb into some of the trains and Honeybun was enamored with all the historical items that are so different from what we know today.
Day 2:
Buda Castle
Our second day in Budapest with kids was the Saturday before Easter. We decided to go up to the Buda Castle area where they were holding an Easter weekend festival. After riding the Funicular up to the top of the hill where the castle is located, which the girls loved, we spent most of the rest of the day wandering around the festival (there were traditional rides, an animal petting area, Hungarian music and dancers and tons of yummy traditional food!) and strolling through the historic Buda area of Budapest.
We did not go into any of the castle buildings which house the Budapest History Museum, the National Gallery and the Presidential Palace, but we did catch the changing of the guard.
Arena Plaza
That evening, we decided to check out the Arena Plaza which we noticed near the train station when we arrived. The large shopping center features many stores as well as many restaurants and a movie theater. We figured with the prices of food and accommodation, it was worth doing a little shopping and we were right! There were many bargains to be found and we actually ended up buying an extra suitcase to bring our purchases home. Even though I’m excellent at packing to leave room for souvenirs, we still ended up being those people, though Budapest was our last stop on a three-city adventure (Vilnius, Lithuania; Vienna, Austria; Budapest, Hungary) so we had accumulated a lot of treasures!
Day 3:
Budapest Zoo
Our third day was Easter Sunday. We headed to the zoo, which is also located in the City Park, because I had read somewhere they were doing a big Easter event. It turns out that there wasn’t anything special for Easter but we still enjoyed our visit and getting much closer to the animals than most American zoos allow.
Szechenyi Baths
After the zoo, which only took the morning, we returned to the Szechenyi Baths for another swim since we were right there. After another few hours in the warm pool, we wandered through the City Park before returning back to our hotel to rest after many, many busy days.
Day 4:
Gellert Baths
We left late on the fourth day of our visit to Budapest with kids. That morning we decided to check out another of Budapest’s famous baths, the Gellert Baths, which are at the foot of the hill below Buda Castle (we’d tried to go after our visit to the castle but it wasn’t a family admission day so I would have had to take the girls to the women’s baths and hubby would have had to go alone to the men’s baths.) We started in the indoor baths since we didn’t do that part at the Szechenyi Baths but the girls were overly excited and loud so we ended up spending most of our visit in one of the smaller outdoor pools which we had to ourselves for most of our visit.
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