Day trips from Budapest
10 h route4 stopsBest: April to OctoberUpdated July 2026
North of Budapest the Danube makes a tight, almost ninety-degree turn between two mountain massifs: this is the Danube Bend, and gathered along it are three towns that were capitals and royal seats of Hungary long before Budapest was anything.
It’s the classic trip, and the easiest of them, Szentendre, is a three-quarter-hour suburban train from the city. The rest call for a boat, a bus or a car, and deserve a full day.
The route, stop by stop
4 STOPS- 01
Szentendre
Szentendre was repopulated by Serbs fleeing the Ottoman advance in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and that’s where its difference comes from: Serbian Orthodox churches among Baroque houses painted in colours, on steep lanes running down to the river.
It’s the simplest escape from Budapest: the HÉV suburban train leaves from Batthyány tér and takes about three quarters of an hour.
The town is small and heavily visited, with plenty of souvenir shops, but climbing two streets from the centre shakes that off.
- 02
Visegrád and the Danube Bend
Visegrád served as a royal seat in the fourteenth century, when Hungary was a central European power, and in 1335 the kings of Hungary, Bohemia and Poland met there in a congress that still gives its name to today’s Visegrád Group. From the citadel on top of the hill you see the whole bend: the Danube turning between mountains, an island in the middle. You climb from the town on a steep path or take a local bus. Below lie the ruins of Matthias Corvinus’s royal palace, rediscovered underground in the twentieth century.
- 03
Esztergom
Hungary had its first capital here, and Stephen I was crowned here in 1000 or 1001.
It remains the country’s primatial see, and its basilica, finished in the nineteenth century, is the largest church in Hungary: the dome is visible from far off, planted on a hill beside the river.
Opposite, across the Danube, is already Slovakia: the Mária Valéria bridge joins them, destroyed from 1944 until it was rebuilt in 2001. You walk across and you’re in another country in five minutes.
- 04
Eger and the Valley of the Beautiful Women
Eger is about two hours to the north-east, a small Baroque town with a famous castle: in 1552 it withstood a far larger Ottoman siege, an episode every Hungarian knows from a school novel. Ottoman rule also left the northernmost surviving minaret in Europe. On the edge of town is the Szépasszony-völgy, the “Valley of the Beautiful Women”: a hollow with dozens of cellars dug into the tufa, door beside door, where you taste Egri Bikavér, “bull’s blood”, from the barrel. It’s one of the pleasantest and least touristy plans in the country.
Frequently asked
What’s the best day trip from Budapest?
Szentendre if you want something easy: forty-five minutes on the HÉV suburban train from Batthyány tér. With a full day and an appetite for landscape, the Danube Bend with Visegrád and Esztergom. And if wine interests you, Eger and its valley of cellars.
What is the Danube Bend?
The stretch north of Budapest where the Danube turns almost ninety degrees between two mountain massifs. Along that curve lie Szentendre, Visegrád and Esztergom, three towns that were royal seats or capitals of Hungary centuries before Budapest existed as such.