Hotel
Stayed for 3 nights on the last weekend of October 2011 for a city break. our room was on the 4th floor facing Vaci street and was clean and spacious with good lighting . The décor was modern and all areas seemed clean. There was a mini bar fridge, air con , laptop safe, flat screen TV (but only CNN in English) and WiFi. There is no tea/coffee making facilities. The Room was made up each day and we had fresh towels and toiletries supplied. The bathroom was well lit, fully tiled and very modern and it seemed very clean. For some reason there is no screen or curtain on the shower /bath even though there is a shower head and raiser rail. The hotel is located on the pedestrian Vaci Ucta near the Danube. It’s a little hard to find at first with just a narrow front with just a double door width entrance. Its between the Mercure and the adiddas shop over the Libra bookstore (See photo) opposite the shopping passage mall. Breakfast is in a room on 6th floor which is small and the continental breakfast is more in line with what we have had in motels rather than some 3 star hotels. There was a good selection of bread and rolls and croissants also there was cold meat, cheese, salads, yoghurt, two cereals and what looked like hot omelette or scrambled egg and hot sausage. The orange and the Grapefruit juices were the most watery and least flavoured I have ever had, more akin to coloured water than juice. The tea and coffee seemed fine. All the staff were very friendly and helpful especially the chap on reception. Overall the hotel was good and with its great location ideal for a short stay break the only bad points being the lack of a shower screen and small breakfast room with tasteless juices. There is no bar or restaurant in the hotel. We took a taxi from the Airport to the hotel booked from the stand outside arrivals for a fixed 5100 HUF. If you get same firm back there is a 1000 HUF reduction on the price charged
Eating
There are many restaurants within 1 to 5 minutes walk with another two within 50 meters of the front door. Just across the street is ‘Sorforras’ where we had traditional Hungarian meals on two nights. A meal for two and a bottle of wine about 50 Euro, Wine was generally more expensive than I had expected in all restaurants with prices from 3500 to 5000 HUF for the lower priced ones in a wine producing country
Sightseeing
We took one of the hop on hop off tour bus trips which include a one hour river trip as well. The company run a orange and pink fleet of single and double deckers. We were on a single deck coach the view was poor and the dirty windows didn’t help. The guide and the driver spent the entire trip in conversion with each other only stopping to point out some buildings and announce stops. The headphones are not a disposable type and have just fixed foam ear pads and the RCA audio phono socket does not allow you to plug in the standard 3.5 mm personal earphones to listen to the pre recorded multi language commentary . The tour takes over two hours with a 20-30 minute stop at the citadel on the Buda side . The bus seemed to travel at no more than 20 KPH on at least 80% of the trip. The bus was old and I marked my trousers leg on dirty edge areas along the central walkway on which the seats are mounted. The ticket was 4500 HUF each and they run every 30 minutes. Ticket stalls are at locations all over the city. The boat goes from a dock near stop no. 12 and also looks like one of the older smaller ones on the river. One surprising thing we noticed was the lack of police in the city we never saw a officer one any street in the many hours we walked around the city over three days we felt very safe and there seemed to be no professional beggars or pickpockets around unlike Prague or Milan . We travelled on a good priced package booked with ‘Click & Go’ in Dublin.