Budapest

Budapest is landlocked, and the Danube through the city is for looking at, not for swimming. Summer bathing here means the strand, the big open-air lidos with lawns, several pools and a day-long crowd of families and students. Palatinus on Margaret Island is the classic, and there are others in Óbuda and the outer districts.

For open water, Lake Velence is under an hour by train. It is shallow, warms past 25°C in high summer, and has small resort beaches with reed beds behind them. Lake Balaton, the country's summer playground, is about two hours away, which makes it a long day or an overnight stay. A visitor who wants sand and sea should look somewhere else.

Hungarian cooking is rich and paprika-red: goulash and fisherman's soup, chicken paprikash, stuffed cabbage, lángos fried to order, and chimney cake from street stalls. The Great Market Hall at Fővám tér is the place to see the ingredients, with salami, dried peppers, goose liver and pickles under a tiled roof. The grand coffee houses of the Austro-Hungarian era still serve layered cakes like Dobos and Esterházy, and Gerbeaud on Vörösmarty tér is the most famous of them.

Wine is the real surprise. Tokaji, Eger's reds, and the whites from Lake Balaton and Somló fill wine bars across District V and VII, and pálinka fruit brandy comes after dinner. The city also has a serious modern restaurant tier. Away from the main tourist streets, the everyday eating is honest, though the range is narrow outside Hungarian and Central European food.

Budapest's two halves face each other across the Danube, and the river front between them is the city's great sight. On the Pest bank stands the neo-Gothic Parliament. On the Buda hill sit the Royal Palace, Matthias Church and the Fishermen's Bastion. The Chain Bridge links them. On the Pest side, Andrássy Avenue runs past grand apartment blocks and the opera house out to Heroes' Square. Both the river panorama and the avenue are UNESCO-listed.

The Museum of Fine Arts holds an excellent collection of old masters. The Hungarian National Gallery fills the palace, and the National Museum tells the country's story. St Stephen's Basilica and the Dohány Street Synagogue, one of the largest in the world, anchor the centre. The Jewish Quarter, Art Nouveau buildings such as the Gresham Palace and the Museum of Applied Arts, Ottoman tombs and the communist statues of Memento Park give the city real layers. It takes several days to see well.

Going out in Budapest centres on the old Jewish Quarter of District VII. There, the ruin bars fill crumbling courtyard tenements with mismatched furniture, fairy lights and several rooms of different music. Around them, Kazinczy and Király streets pack in cocktail bars, wine bars and late clubs, and the area stays loud until well after 2am at weekends. In summer the scene moves outdoors to garden bars and to party boats and riverside terraces along the Danube.

Prices for drinks are low, so the city draws many stag and student groups, and the central streets can feel rowdy on Friday and Saturday nights. Quieter evenings are easy to find in the wine bars of District V or in the cafés of Buda, where the night ends earlier.

The Buda Hills rise straight from the western districts. Oak and beech forest, lookout towers such as the one on János Hill, and a chairlift and cogwheel railway put real walking within half an hour of the centre. Under the hills run cave systems formed by thermal water, and some are open for guided visits or crawling tours. Margaret Island, a car-free park in the middle of the river, is the city's favourite jogging loop.

About an hour north, the Danube Bend cuts through the Pilis and Börzsöny hills, giving forested ridges, river views, good hiking and a long cycle path along the water. Kayaking and rowing on the Danube are possible too. The surrounding country is mostly gentle and low, and there are no mountains, so the outdoors here means pleasant walking rather than anything dramatic.

The classic outing is the Danube Bend. Szentendre is a painters' town of Baroque churches and cobbled lanes, reached by suburban train in under an hour. Visegrád has a royal palace and a hilltop citadel above the river. Esztergom's huge basilica stands over the Slovak border. Gödöllő's royal palace, linked to Empress Sisi, is an easy half-day by suburban train.

Further out, at around two hours, the list widens. Eger has its castle, its Baroque centre and the cellars of the Valley of the Beautiful Women. Hollókő is a UNESCO-listed village of whitewashed houses. Pannonhalma is a thousand-year-old abbey, and the Tihany peninsula sits on Lake Balaton. Tokaj, Pécs and the capitals across the border are better done with an overnight stay.

Budapest has more for children than its grand façades suggest. The zoo in City Park is one of the oldest in Europe, with Art Nouveau animal houses, and the park around it has a boating lake that becomes an ice rink in winter. The Children's Railway through the Buda Hills is staffed by schoolchildren in uniform. The Palace of Wonders is a hands-on science centre, and Margaret Island has bike carts, a musical fountain and a small animal park.

In summer the open-air lidos, with their wave pools and slides, are a full day out. Some thermal baths have family pools, though the hottest pools are not for small children. The trams make it easy to get about with a pushchair, but metro stairs, busy central pavements and loud weekend nights in District VII need some planning.

Central Pest is flat and easy to walk, and most of the main sights lie between the river and the Grand Boulevard. Trams carry much of the load. Line 2 runs along the Danube embankment past Parliament, which makes it a sightseeing ride in its own right, and lines 4 and 6 circle the boulevard round the clock. The metro is short and simple to learn. Line 1, under Andrássy Avenue, is continental Europe's oldest underground and still has its little yellow carriages.

Buda is steeper, but buses, the funicular and walking paths reach the Castle District. Public ferries cross and run along the river. Nobody needs a car, and taxis and ride-hailing are cheap for late nights.

Váci utca is the best-known shopping street, but it is mostly chain stores and souvenirs. The better buys are elsewhere. On Andrássy Avenue there is a short run of luxury labels. Herend and Zsolnay porcelain have their own shops in the centre. Paprika, salami, Tokaji and embroidered linen fill the Great Market Hall. In Districts V and VII small Hungarian design and fashion boutiques sell clothing, ceramics and leather goods.

Ecseri flea market on the city's edge is good for communist-era objects, old textiles and antiques, and the courtyard design markets in the old Jewish Quarter are worth a weekend browse. The city is a pleasant place to shop but has little depth, and few people come to Budapest mainly for shopping.

Budapest costs less than most Western European capitals, though it is not a budget city in the way some of its eastern neighbours can be. Public transport and wine are cheap, and so are the coffee houses outside the grandest addresses. Good mid-range hotels and apartments are easy to find within walking distance of the centre. Entry to the thermal baths is reasonable for a half-day's use.

The tourist core is where costs build up. Restaurants along Váci utca and around the Basilica charge more for less, and the grand historic cafés price their setting into the bill. Eating at lunch menus in residential districts, and drinking where locals do, makes a stay much lighter on the wallet.

Classical music is the strength here. The neo-Renaissance State Opera House on Andrássy Avenue is one of Europe's most beautiful, and the Erkel Theatre gives a second stage. The Art Nouveau great hall of the Liszt Academy is among the finest places anywhere to hear chamber and orchestral music. Müpa, the modern arts centre on the Danube, houses the national concert hall. The Budapest Festival Orchestra and a busy season of church concerts mean there is music most nights, and tickets are easy to get.

Operetta has its own theatre and a long local tradition. The national folk ensembles perform Hungarian dance and music, and there are small jazz clubs and live-music bars in Pest. Spoken theatre is almost entirely in Hungarian, so for visitors the scene is mainly music and dance.

No other capital is built on hot water like this one. More than a hundred thermal springs rise under the city and feed baths that are part of everyday life, not a luxury add-on. The Széchenyi in City Park is the famous one, a neo-Baroque palace whose steaming outdoor pools stay full in the snow, with old men playing chess in the water. The Gellért is Art Nouveau splendour, with mosaics, a glass-roofed hall and tiled thermal pools.

On the Buda bank, Rudas and Király keep their sixteenth-century Ottoman domes, with light falling through star-shaped openings onto octagonal pools. Rudas also has a rooftop pool above the river. The Lukács is where locals go for their regular soak. An afternoon in the baths, moving between pools, saunas and cold plunges, then a slow coffee house, sets the pace of a good stay.