What should I avoid in Budapest?

Váci utca serves Budapest's worst meals. The restaurants on its southern half, between Ferenciek tere and the Great Market Hall at Fővám tér, have a long record of bills running past 30,000 HUF for goulash and two beers, with the usual tricks being an unlisted service line and fish priced per 100 grams. The street smells of chimney cake and cigarette smoke, and the food rarely beats the smell. Walk ten minutes east to Frici Papa on Király utca instead, where a bowl of gulyás and chicken paprikash with soft nokedli dumplings still costs a few thousand forints. Before you tip, check every Budapest bill for a 10 to 15% service charge that may already be on it. Upstairs at the Great Market Hall, the lángos counters charge close to double what the same hot, greasy fried dough costs at a neighbourhood market, and the paprika sold in embroidered souvenir sacks tends to be the same Kalocsa or Szeged powder the downstairs stalls sell in plain tins for less.

Euronet ATMs cost first-timers more than any pickpocket on tram 4 or 6. These blue-and-yellow machines stand on nearly every Belváros corner, add their own fees, and push a 'guaranteed' conversion rate, so refuse the conversion or walk to an OTP Bank machine and take out forints. At 324.5 HUF to the US dollar, a 40,000 HUF withdrawal should cost about $123, but a 10% conversion markup puts it near $135 on your card. The exchange booths in Terminal 2 at Liszt Ferenc give some of the weakest rates in Hungary. The other scam is older and nastier: a friendly woman, sometimes two, starts chatting with a man near Vörösmarty tér or on Andrássy út and suggests a bar she knows, then a bill of several hundred thousand forints arrives with a doorman standing at the exit. Embassies in Budapest have warned about this pattern for years. Say no, and drink at places you picked yourself.

At Liszt Ferenc Airport, walk past anyone in the arrivals hall offering a ride. The Főtaxi rank outside charges Budapest's regulated per-kilometre tariff, which puts a trip to District V at roughly 11,000 to 13,000 HUF. The 100E bus is cheaper and gets to Deák Ferenc tér in about 35 minutes, though it needs its own airport ticket because the standard 450 HUF single is not valid on it. If you buy paper tickets, stamp each one in a validator before you board. Plain-clothes BKK inspectors with armbands wait at the M2 and M3 exits at Deák and fine on the spot. We'd also skip the Sikló funicular queue at Clark Ádám tér: bus 16 from Deák Ferenc tér climbs to Dísz tér in the Castle District on an ordinary ticket, and you won't spend half an hour standing in the cold Danube wind.

Fisherman's Bastion charges for its upper turrets during the day, but the free lower arcades look across the Danube to the same Parliament view, and once the ticket booth closes in the evening the whole terrace is usually free. Matthias Church next door is worth its entry fee. The turret is not. Szimpla Kert on Kazinczy utca often has a 40-minute queue on Friday and Saturday nights, and inside it is a sticky, elbow-to-elbow crawl, so go on a weekday around 6pm, or on Sunday morning for the farmers' market. The same Erzsébetváros nightlife is the reason we'd advise against booking your first hotel in District VII, where stag parties roar past until 4am. Stay in District V, or on the quieter stretch of District VI near the Hungarian State Opera House. Széchenyi Baths on Saturday afternoons is another one to avoid: at 9am on a weekday the sulphur-smelling outdoor pools have room to swim, and that matters on a grey 12.2°C October evening.