Day Trips

Szentendre, Eger, the Danube Bend and Lake Balaton — which station, how long, and what a return costs.

The main square of Szentendre, north of Budapest
Photograph by Jakub Hałun, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Budapest sits in the middle of a small country with good trains, so a day out is genuinely easy — and the mistake most visitors make is leaving it until they have already seen everything, when the best of these deserve a whole day rather than a leftover afternoon.

Where people go

Szentendre is the easy one: a small riverside town of painted houses and galleries about forty minutes north on the HEV suburban railway from Batthyany ter. Note that the HEV needs a supplement beyond the city zone — an ordinary Budapest ticket does not cover the whole journey.

The Danube Bend — Visegrad and Esztergom — is the scenic version, reachable by bus, train or, in season, by boat. Eger, two hours east by train, is a baroque town with a castle and the Valley of the Beautiful Women, where the wine cellars are. Lake Balaton is a summer trip rather than a year-round one and is better as an overnight.

A street in Szentendre, north of Budapest
Szentendre is forty minutes north on the HEV. Photograph by Jakub Hałun, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Buying the ticket

Domestic trains are run by MAV and are inexpensive; buy at the station or through the app. Return fares are usually just double the single, so there is rarely an advantage in booking ahead — the advantage is in checking which of the two or three stations your train leaves from.

Checked on 4 September 2026 against published sources. Fares, hours and closing days change without much warning — confirm before you travel.

The musical fountain on Margaret Island
Margaret Island is the day out that needs no train at all. Photograph by Globetrotter19, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
Inside Budapest Keleti railway station
Trains are run by MAV; check which of the three stations you leave from. Photograph by Slyronit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

This section is being written. The guide above is the section for now. New articles are published across the site about twice a week rather than a section being filled in a day, so this page grows steadily — it is worth looking in again. In the meantime the sixteen sight pages and the plans by trip length are finished, and they are the best place to start.

Coming next in this section

  • Szentendre from Budapest: the HEV, the supplement, and what to see
  • The Danube Bend: Visegrad and Esztergom in a day
  • Eger from Budapest by train, and the Valley of the Beautiful Women
  • Lake Balaton from Budapest: why it is an overnight, not a day trip

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