6 of the best day trips from Budapest

24.07.2024 - 16:28 / lonelyplanet.com

Jul 23, 2024 • 6 min read

You get a lot of bang for your buck when you visit beautiful Budapest – architecturally wonderful Buda and fun-filled Pest – but there are even more delights beyond the city limits.

The countryside is just a short journey away and wine cellars, cobbled country towns and historic, arty outposts by the Danube await you. The area around Budapest is gorgeous all through the year, and once you've had your fill of history, art, wine and nature, you can retreat back to Budapest's elegant thermal baths to soak in lavish style before supper.

These day trips from Budapest are easy by bus, train, car, or even boat – pack your walking shoes and start exploring.

Travel time: 1½ hours

Northeast of Budapest, Eger Castle is legendary as the bastion that held out against the Turkish invasion, but the relics of the town's eventual Ottoman conquest, including a 40m-high (131ft) minaret and Turkish baths, still pepper Eger’s baroque streets.

Apart from the legacy of the siege, Eger is known for its wine – most notably "Bull’s Blood," believed by the Turks to have given the Hungarians superhuman power in battle. Today, you can try Eger wines straight from the barrel in the Valley of Beautiful Women (Szépasszony-völgy Hétvége) on the outskirts of town, where wine cellars are carved into the bedrock of the surrounding hills.

If you have time, pay a visit to the city’s historic Lyceum, with its wood-clad baroque Archdiocesan Library and its Great Tower, housing an astronomy museum filled with vintage instruments as well as a camera obscura overlooking the city.

How to get to Eger from Budapest: It takes 1½ hours to reach Eger from Budapest by car. Alternatively, trains run from Budapest's Budapest-Keleti station to Eger station, taking around two hours.

Travel time: 40 minutes

As you stroll along Szentendre’s cobbled streets, with the 18th-century tower of Blagoveštenska Church peering above the wine-red and sunset-yellow colored houses, you'll immediately understand why this handsome country town is the most popular day trip destination from Budapest. Szentendre sees visitors year-round, but aim to avoid weekends in high summer when the town can get really busy.

Szentendre had a thriving Serbian community back in the 18th century, and it became better known as an artists’ colony in the late 1920s. The town is still dotted with galleries, including the Margit Kovács Ceramic Collection and Serbian Ecclesiastical Art Collection. More cultural encounters await at the open-air ethnographic museum on the outskirts of town, and the National Wine Museum, which traces the development of winemaking in Hungary from its earliest days and offers a wine tour with tastings.

How to get to Szentendre from Budapest: Szenten