We are planning on visiting Budapest for a weekend in May. It is a second visit (last one about 10 years ago), so we intend to take it easy rather than cram in every possible sight.

We have been scanning all the posts and are now trying to get to a shortlist of hotels. A river (or other?) view is really important to us, as is a good walkable location. We also want to avoid traffic noise if possible.

Can anyone suggest mid range hotels that fit the bill, and also any particularly good rooms or floors in those hotels. An alternative would be a good quality apartment, although we have not been able to locate any with views.

We have looked at Victoria Hotel, but are concerned about traffic noise and also by the equal number of positive and negative reviews on various sites. It appears to have two rooms with balconies, that may outweigh all the rest of the info. Has anyone stayed in them?

Art'Otel is another contender.

And we also wondered about Normafa which is out of town but appears to have great views.

Does anyone out there have any opinions on these or ideas on others? Thanks in advance.

Try this B&B. We liked it.

www.bellevuebudapest.com

We stayed at Victoria a week ago. We stayed at 8th floor and we had no problem with the noise. There ia A/C in room, so if it hot, no need to open the window.
I do not recommend the rooms with balcony. They are at 9th floor, and the elevator goes only to 8th. Also, these two rooms are smaller, because the balcony takes from the room area.
All the rooms look to Danube, and they have huge windows. The view is splendid, day and night.
For a good view, you have to ask for floors 6-8 (because of the trees); maybe also 5 is OK.
At the room in the middle (number ended with 2, like 72, 82, etc)the window does not open. I do not know about room ended with 1. We stayed at 82 and we had one of the windows (corner) opening.
The position of the hotel was very good, the room big, good breakfast.
We are ready to stay there again.

I saw Art'Otel - it is 1 minute from Victoria, so the location is also good, but I can not say anything else about it.

We stayed at the Art'Otel in April of 2004 and loved it. Our room was opposite the river so we had a nice view of the Fisherman's Bastion.
Our room was quiet and comfortable, a lovely breakfast came with the room.
I would stay at the Art'Otel again.
It was located a short distance from the Metro it was a nice walk across the bridge and a good hike up to the hill to the Fisherman's Bastion.

Another vote for the Victoria. I wasn't aware that any rooms even had balconies, but we were thrilled with our room with huge windows facing across the river to Parliament. No noise at all that I was aware of.

Our only negative was a monetary question. We had made a deposit of half the total. But meanwhile the currency changed so dramatically that they looked at how many of their currency we had paid before and tried to say we now owed about 3/4 more of the total. They couldn't seem to understand that they should have been looking at the value of the total currency we had paid when it was worth that, not what it was worth today. Half the total should be half the total!

When we book the rooms at Victoria they did not ask for any deposit; we gave only the credit card number as warranty. The price was in Euro.

Yes, this was about 8 years ago -- pre Euro. I'm sure it's not a problem now.

How about the Marriott? The location is excellent and all the rooms have a great view of the river across to the Buda side of the city. There are no rooms on the other side of the building which would normally face the other way.

I was there in February 2005 and got this hotel on Priceline. The Art 'Otel is another that used to come up on Priceline (4*) but since my trip I haven't really followed other "wins".