hroark

Prague / Budapest Trip Report

Just came back from a two week trip to Prague and Budapest with my girlfriend. As the flight schedule included a break in Zurich, we ended up spending a three nights there as well.

As most of the standard information (sites to see, places to eat etc) is already available on this forum and in other guide books, I will only focus on things that we really liked or disliked on this trip.

Prague:

My main priority in choosing hotels while traveling is location, as central as possible.

Made hotel reservations through tomas at [email protected]. For the first night, we stayed at U Three Drums ~$135/night, a little on the expensive side, small room, but great location (literally 2 minutes walk from the Old Town Square) and friendly staff. After the first night, we moved to the pension U Green Garland for ~$100/night. Loved it and would HIGHLY recommend it. Great location (close to King Charles Bridge) and very friendly and helpful staff.

Couple of restaurants that we liked:
Kavarna Slavia (Smetanova nabr 1012/2, Stare Mesto): Great views of the river and the castle, and decent Czech food for lunch (under $10/person)

Café Flambee (Betlem Palace, Husova 5): The main restaurant downstairs is apparently very famous (past guest include Madeline Albright, Michael Douglas, Nichol Kidman, Tom Cruise etc), but there is a smaller restaurant(caf&eacute at street level, which had pretty good food, quiet affordable (~$20/person)

We did visit Cesky Krumlov, which was very quaint and nice. I was very impressed by the town (lots of cute, meandering streets), but was slightly under whelmed by the castle itself. Would have loved to spend the night there but our scheduling did not allow for it. As a day trip, Cesky Krumlov is a rather tiring 8hr train ride (~4hrs each way). Would suggest people to take a bus to Cesky Krumlov instead since it is faster than to take a train.

Prague to Budapest: This trip gave us much more excitement than we expected or wanted?.

We had originally made reservations to travel from Prague to Budapest by the night train (leaves Prague at 11.34pm and gets into Budapest at 8.30am. The two tickets cost ~ $160). At about 11.30pm (after we had settled into our berths), the ticket collector came by to ask us if we had Slovakian visas, as the train passes through Slovakia before entering Hungary. This was something we had not anticipated at all, as we assumed transiting through the country would not require a visa?.(note that both my girlfriend and I hold passports which need visas for getting into Slovakia). We ended up getting out of the train at the last minute and were stuck there at the Prague train station at 12pm in the night, not the healthiest of places to be at that time of night (lots of prostitution going on outside).

We bargained with a taxi driver to drive us back to our pension for about 250kc (he initially asked us for 500kc, when the usual price is ~150kc) and landed back at the pension at 1.00am. The owners of the pension were kind enough to put us up for the night. The next day we bought plane tickets to fly to Budapest and ended up paying ~$400/person on Czech Air, the cheapest tickets we could get for that day.


Budapest:

Stayed at the Marriott on the Pest side. The view of the Royal Palace, Castle Hill and Chain Bridge is spectacular. While the hotel itself is an eyesore from the outside, its location is great and we managed to get a pretty good deal from Priceline ($70/night). The pastry buffet in the hotel lobby is overrated, IMO.

Couple of restaurants that we liked (note that both of these are listed in Fodors):
Baraka (District V, Magyar): Within walking distance from the Marriott, this restaurant is owned by an Israeli-American couple. The cuisine I suppose could be termed as Hungarian fusion. Great food and ambience (under $30/person for a three course meal with wine)

Vista Travel Cafe (District VII, Paulay Ede u.) A rather eclectic place with a variety of dishes on the menu. The desert selection was great, especially the somloi galuska, a Hungarian speciality (~$20/person) and the best hot walnut cake ever eaten.

There is a Burger King off the Vorosmarty Square that offers internet surfing for ~$1.00 for 20 minutes, the cheapest rates that we ran across.

The Hungarian Opera House in Budapest offers incredible deals and we went there twice in our four days there, once to watch Puccini?s Tosca opera and the second time to watch the ballet Amadeus. For Tosca, we got last minute tickets for ~$4.00 per person, nosebleeds but can?t beat the value. We watched Amadeus from orchestra seats (4 rows from the stage) for ~$26 per person.

doctor_lorenzo

It is unfortunate that the poster did not know that there is a train from Prague to Budapest, leaving at 00:21 (12:21 AM), routed through Vienna, which does NOT pass through Slovakia. He says that he returned to the train station at midnight, the better to observe Czech prostitution in action, so he would have had time to hop on the right train, or, failing that, the right hooker. Since the posters do not give their national origin, it is impossible to tell whether this other train would have been helpful, or whether a visa would have been necessary for Austria.

However, it is suspicious that the poster lists all prices in U.S. dollars, and writes like an American. U.S. citizens do NOT need a visa for Slovakia, so I suspect that perhaps the ticket man was "goofing" on them (pulling a joke). It is necessary to get a RESERVATION for both Slovakia and Hungary, which is a pain in the arse, because they don't tell you this until you arrive in Slovakia. I had this unpleasant surprise myself. The Slovaks shook me down for a $10 fine for not having a reservation, and the Hungarians (in the person of an exquisitely beautiful, tanned, blond, 30-year old woman) scolded me, but ultimately let me off without a fine.

This train runs every day. Even if this train had been missed, it is possible to just take a direct train from Prague to Vienna, then from Vienna to Budapest. A difficulty can arise from the fact that Vienna has three train stations.

The detail can be viewed on http://www.bahn.de.

It is interesting that the poster pisses and moans about a 250Kc cab ride (six bucks U.S. - "but it should only cost four!!!!" - for two people, no less), yet blows $800 U.S. for a completely unnecessary flight, in addition to the $160 that was spent for the overnight train, and the additional $100 for another night at the pension.

If the poster had posted before his trip, Fodorites would have alerted him to the necessity of a visa. You see - theis forum can save you a small fortune. Dude, if you are an American, you got royally ripped!

hroark

I am not sure what exactly your problem in life is, but you should have bothered to read my posting properly before offering your stunningly insightful advice......

I am amazed at your perceptiviness to notice that "the poster lists all prices in U.S. dollars, and writes like an American. U.S. citizens do NOT need a visa for Slovakia". I guess it did not occur to you that I could be living in the US (I am permanent resident of the US) and not be an US citizen, and hold a passport from a country which requires a visa to enter Slovakia? BTW, thanks for explaining what ?goofing on them? means. I would never have known otherwise.

I am not sure why you think that I "returned to the train station at midnight, the better to observe Czech prostitution in action....." My train was supposed to leave the station at 11.34pm..... Unfortunately, unlike you I do not have an encyclopedic knowledge of the train connections in Eastern Europe and was not aware of the fact that there was another train. Next time I am plan on travelling by train in Europe, I will be sure to check with you.

I posted the cab fare so others would know what the typical fare is?.. As for the $800 spent on the tickets, it was either that or staying in Prague for an extra 10 days and ruining our vacation (that?s how long it takes to get a Slovak visa), so I don?t think that was money spent ?unnecessarily?, IMO.

I checked this forum before going on the trip and did not see any postings on visa requirements for transiting through Slovakia? may be I missed a post. Again, know that I know of an authority such as yourself on travel in Europe, I will be sure to consult with you before any future trips to make sure that I don?t get ?royally ripped?

Thanks much!

sapori98

Hi, I'm the girlfriend of 'hroak' the poster of the message. I traveled with him to Prague and Badapest. So I can clarify what happened. We both have US greencard (permanent residency status)but we don't have US passport. We have the passports from the countries that require visa to visit countries in Eastern Europe, so we do need the visa to go into Prague, Slovakia, Hungary and Austria. I belive even if we had known about the train from Prague-Budapest via Austria, it wouldn't have helped either because we still do need visa for Austria. The bottom line is we had no idea that that the visa for train travel works differently from air travel. We thought that if we didn't get out of the train, we wouldn't need a visa (like transitting at the airport).

We had to get out of the night train which departed around 12:30am because the conductor told us that we couldn't travel by train to Hungary if we didn't have Slovakian visa. We witnessed the prostitution outside the Prague train station which was going on in full-force after midnight. But we had nothing to do with it. It was just our observation that the train station was not a good place to hang around at night. Prague train station closes between 1am - 3am. So we had to get out of the train station and couldn't stayed around there. We tried to call a cab but the cab driver raised the price to 500Kc when it was supposed to be 150Kc. My boyfriend negotiated down to 250Kc. There were not many cabs at the train station at 12:30am. So we had to go with this cab driver. My boyfriend complained about 250Kc cab fare because this showed that some cab drivers in Prague still try to take advantage of tourists.

Well, we were lucky that the pension we had stayed with previously had the open room that night. So we stayed there for another night. The following morning we tried to call Slovakian embassy. We asked the pension manager to find the Slovakian embassy phone number in the phone book for us, he couldn't find it anywhere. We even tried to find on the internet but the phone number listed was the wrong phone number. In desperate attempt. We called the US embassy in Prague. Fortunately, US embassy did have the phone number of Slovakian embassy. So we called the Slovakian embassy to ask about the visa. Unfortunately, it would take 10 days to get Slovakian visa. We couldn't wait for 10 days because we had already paid for the hotel in Budapest via priceline. So if we stayed any longer in Prague, we would have to pay for both hotel in Prague and Budapest. That's double-whammy! And we also wanted to get to see Hungary before our trip end. 10 days waiting for Slovakian visa would be longer than the remaining of our trip. These were the reasons why we decided to buy the airplane tickets to travel from Prague to Budapest that costed nearly $400/person for just one hour flight. (We did check on the internet also for the cheap tickets but all the airlines quoted similar prices). Waiting in Prague 10 days for Slovakian visa would definitely costs us more than $800.

This is just an adecnote for the travelers of the nationalities that do require visa to travel to Eastern Europe. We thought it is a good idea to post our experiences because most of the fodor's-er are US citizen and don't need visa to travel to Eastern Europe but there must be some fodors'-er who don't have US passports. Had we known about the visa requirement for train travel, we would have had a lot better experience in our trip and would have saved some money also.

Well, besides the adventure due the visas, we had good time in Prague. I think Prague is the most beautiful city in the world. I definitely recommend people to visit Prague but please make sure you have all the visas you needed if you plan to travel by train.

kaudrey

Please ignore the rudeness of doctor_lorenzo.

I am glad you had a nice trip despite the visa problems. Although I am a US citizen, I am sure your troubles will prevent the same thing happening to other readers who are not US citizens.

And there are a lot of them, despite the American-centric attitude the good "doctor" exhibits.

I also love Prague, and Budapest is on my radar screen for a future trip!

Karen

hroark

hi karen

thanks for the post! that was exactly the intention of my original post, so that other fodorites who may need a visa for Slovakia donot end up in the same predicament that we did.....

doctor,

i do appreciate (your completely unsolicited) advice.

btw, you show amazing imagination to jump from me being stuck at the railway station to " would have had time to hop on the right train, or, failing that, the right hooker". speaking from experience there doc?

hdgrace

I'm sorry for your experience. I loved Budapest and it would have been a shame to miss it. I recently traveled Eastern Europe, and while I had nothing like your experience, I found the Prague train station one of the most difficult I have encountered in Eastern or Western Europe. We tried to exhange our reservations for a more convienient time and finally gave up as we could not find one station worker at any of the windows who spoke any English. I know I can't expect to find English everywhere, but there was quite a line of people who gave up...including us due to frustration. I'm glad you guys were willing to move on despite your loss of money....I'm sure in the long run you'll be glad you did. Hope you have better luck next time.
Heather