Customer Reviews

Frommer's Budapest & the Best of Hungary

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In preparing for a trip to Hungary, I examined thoroughly the choices for Budapest. The Frommer's Budapest book (3rd edition) gave the best information about finding and choosing accomodations, but the book has no pictures and aside from a nice subway cover on the inside cover, the maps are hard to find and not very easy to use. Frommer's gives excellent information about prices and shops and restaurants; it's almost a guide to buying things rather than a tour book. I didn't find it particularly thorough about travel information, customs, or those sorts of details. That is not entirely fair. They have a nice section in the front a kind of "best of" list for things in budapest. The nice thing about the book is that it recommends things to do if you have only one day, three days or a week. They also suggested some itineraries for walking tours.

The Fodor's Budapest pocket reference is drab and not full of much information. Don't get it.

My favorite guidebook series has been Lonely Planet, and the Budapest Lonely Planet is fairly helpful. Although it doesn't give as thorough a treatment on accomodations, the book gives a lot of hints and secret. I found its facts for the visitors to be the most helpful, and the maps (placed at the very back of the book) to be the easiest to use. The frommer book, on the other hand, put the maps close to the section of the book referring to it. The organization of LP makes it easiest to use in the field; they tend to have the best background, history and cultural information. It was particularly good about including rules, regulations and things like closing times. ON the other hand, there are not many photos, and they don't plan as many walking tours as the frommer book does.

The Eyewitness Travel Guide on Budapest by Tadeusz Olszanski is the most eye-catching and the least helpful. It contains lots of graphics and diagrams and maps, and not too much information. The multitude of pictures are helpful in describing architecture, geography and art. On the other hand, its information on accomodations is very limited. Don't get me wrong; it's a beautiful and interesting book; it just is not as helpful as the other three. And it is two years old. I'm not necessarily saying that this book is bad, merely that it may not help you very much on the excursion.

The Budapest: A Critical Guide by Andras Torok, 4th edition is a less complete and more personal account of things to do in Budapest. The other books were like encyclopedias, but this book was just a few personal recommendations about things to do and places to stay. Also, the writing for this book seems to be better than the other books. If you already are a little familiar with Budapest, but just want to learn about new and undiscovered places, this might be an excellent book. It certainly covers most of the bases, but it just doesn't try to list a huge number of accomodations or restaurants.

I ended up buying the Frommer's and a used copy of the Eyewitness travel guide.

We found that some of the walking tours in Budapest were outdated and difficult to follow. (We toured 9 other locations using other travel books, not frommers, with minimal problem) Elements could not be reached due to changing areas. Cautions regarding closings or operating hours were not accurate. Language was not a problem since one of the 4 of us could speak fluent Hungarian.

We bought both this and the Lonely Planet guide for our trip to Budapest and lived by this book! I think the Lonely Planet guide is more for students backpacking across Europe, this is for the traveler not interested in only spending $20/day in Budapest. The recommendations were top notch, with the top attractions listed actually living up to the billing. All the restaurant reviews were dead-on, we ate at mostly reviewed restaurants and never had a bad meal. It felt like everyone in Budapest spoke English, so you really don't need a Hungarian dictionary, but it would be helpful if the back of the book had a slightly larger translation listing of foods, some important words like "liver" aren't included and can be a shock, especially in a pastry!

Disapointment is the only word I have for all Budapest travel guides that I have purchased. I am anger at Fromer's inconsistency. I purchased a Venice book that had great maps, etc... This book was boring. No thrills.
Go to Budapest and re-write this book. Try a map or 2.

This was one of the best guidebooks I have found for planning a trip with a small child - excellent section on playgrounds and kid-friendly activities. Good guidance on shopping, and great museum descriptions. Pretty good section on hotels.

However, the maps are fairly bad - on the map of hotels, they don't indicate which subway line (yellow, red, blue) is which but they make reference to them in the text - rather confusing. There's also not a lot for the high end/high budget travel - but that didn't matter too much to me! ;-)

I'd also like to see more url's included for making on-line bookings and inquiries, and more info on the social norms of the area - to avoid inadvertant offense when meeting the locals, which we like to do.

This seems extremely helpful (though I haven't taken the trip yet, so won't be sure for another couple of months). It has made planning my days in Budapest much easier and given me some insight into what to expect culturally.

Due to the language barrier, this guide will bwe a big help to me when I visit Budapest in the fall--selecting a hotel, restaurents, sight-seeing etc.

Very helpful, I don't think we would have been able to get around Budapest without it! We also went to a couple of the restaurants that were recommended, and we were quite pleased with those as well. The maps were all very useful as well.

I am looking forward to visiting places that have been described in the book. This is our first trip to Budapest.

It's been my "Bible" as with all Frommer's books that I have bought in the past.