I am just home from a four night stay in Budapest. Since I benefited tremendously from reviews, tips and discussions on TA in planning my trip, I want to share my experiences in the hope of contributing at least a little.

1. Budapest is great in winter. No tourist crowds, lots of wonderful coffeehouses and great warm baths. It is a good idea to have a cosy hotel to rely on, because the weather can be really nasty. As hotel prices are good in winter, consider booking a higher standard hotel than you normally would. We benefited from the "winter invasion"-prices (four nights for the price of three) and found that booking on the hotel website was as cheap as booking through other agencies. We stayed at Corinthia Grand Hotel and really liked it (if interested, see separate review).

2. Public transport works like a dream! We bought a seven day travel card (it costs just a little bit more than a three-day card - 3600 vs 3100 HUF) and used it a lot without any problem. Our tickets were controlled twice upon ENTERING the station, and controllants were friendly.

3. We tried several restaurants, both high and low. Spoon was the big disappointment. We paid 20000 HUF for two (soup, main course, dessert, one glass of wine and one beer), but the food was nothing special. My fish was even rather tasteless and the apple dessert was dry and boring. Menza at Liszt Ferenc Ter was the place we liked best. It is a casual place with a very lively atmosphere, but the food was superb. We paid less than 5000 HUF for two main courses with drinks. (Tip: Try the chicken with sweet potato in honey/mustard sauce.)

4. Coffeehouses deserve a special mention. Budapest is the heaven of pastries. Great, beautiful, coffehouses are everywhere, and pastries are excellent and cheap. For 800-900 HUF you can have coffee ot hot chocolate of highest class and pastries that are out of this world. Wow. If you are a serious pastry lover I can recommend staying at the Corinthia Grand Hotel with access to the Executive Lounge. Here, they have miniature pastries of many different kinds, and you can have as many as you like. And truly, these pastries were the best we had in Budapest. I believe that it is the coffehouse next to (or even inside) Corinthia that delivers these pastries, so if you do not live at Corinthia, you might want to try this coffeehouse. There are some old coffeehouses that are often mentioned in guidebooks. Of these, we found Central Kavehaz fantastic in terms of beauty, but less so in terms of the quality of the pastries. Worth going still for the beauty of the place. Cafe New York is equally beautiful, but is now under the ownership of a large hotel chain and is rather expensive, and staff is not very friendly.

5. Taxis. If you let the hotel or restaurant arrange a taxi for you, it will cost a lot more (often the double) than if you do it yourself but it will normally be there on the spot. Sometimes, you might value this convenience and take the extra cost, and these drivers will not be gangsters. However, it is easy to call taxis from a public phone (phones take coins and a call will cost 20-40 HUF), and if you are from a European country it is not so expensive to use your mobile phone to call a taxi (due to the new roaming agreement within Europe). Taxi operators do speak English, but drivers rarely do. As recommended in this forum, we never hailed taxis on the streets.

6. Safety etc: The only place where we saw potential pickpockets (you do recognize them quite easily!) was at the Metro Station at Blaha Lutja Ter and on the metro line from there to city center. There are some xclubs on Erszebet Körut, avoid the immediate street corners around them at nighttime.

7. People: I feel I should not need to say it, but because it has been dicussed on this forum, I wish to say that people were, almost with no exception, very friendly, honest, and helpful. When shopping, they were careful to count the change in your hand and I did never ever feel at risk of being cheated. Receipts were given even at markets.

8. Matyas Church: I am not a big fan of churches, but I do recommend you: Step into this one. The interior is unlike anything I have seen.

I hope these experiences may be of some use for someone. Do visit Budapest, it is a great city.