I'm back home from Budapest and Vienna. We had an amazing time. Budapest and Vienna are two of the most beautiful cities I've seen in my life. Two cities are similar yet so different. Of the two cities, I preferred Budapest but Vienna was great as well. Here are some pictures from my phone of Budapest and Vienna.
https://imgur.com/a/N4Upgbw
https://imgur.com/a/fw1fuC8
Budapest is full of youthful vibe and energy. You can see and feel the positive energy everywhere in the city. You see young people hustling and can see and feel the youthful optimism. This city is undergoing great transformation and will be totally different and matured city twenty years from now. So I suggest people go visit this marvelous gem of a city NOW while it's still young and innocent instead of waiting. Pretty much everything in the city is absolute bargain, even in the tourist sections. Just forget about shopping since Hungary has one of the highest VAT in Europe.
AirBnB options in Budapest are cheap and good. I paid about $60 a night for one bedroom AirBnB apartment right in the heart of the city and tourist district. It's crazy the value you get for your money in Budapest. And food and drinks are cheap. Giant gyro is little over $2 in the tourist district and will completely fill you up. Something like giant Schnitzel pork plate will run you about $7 and can be shared by two people. Beer and drinks are less than $2 in the tourist district. If you go outside the tourist area, you can get dinner house wine for less than $1 a glass with your meal. Lunches are absolute bargain. Almost every restaurant in the city offers great 2-3 course menu set lunches. Some starting as low as 1,200 HUF or little over $4. Generally for about $10, you can have great 2-3 course lunch meal at really great restaurant like Ket Szerecsen. It's awesome. But quite few places only took cash and not card so I had to always carry some Hungarian forints with me. But cash currency exchange places are common and few gave really great rates with no commission for buy or sell. I basically got the daily currency exchange rate listed on Google for my cash exchange which is better than any ATM or credit card rates.
I want to say I've never seen so many beautiful people everywhere as I've seen in Budapest. Many were visitors from other parts of Europe but many were residents as well. And they all dressed nice. I really enjoyed people watching. And the city, wow. Beautiful architecture, statues, and buildings everywhere. It's bit worn down and poorly maintained in places but that added to the charm. It's fairly large city and things were spread out a bit but I liked that. Public metro and transit were easy to use and generally great but you had to make sure you validated the metro tickets as the ticket inspectors really unfairly targeted tourists 100% of the time. Almost every time I rode the metro, I had random ticket inspectors target me and other tourists on the train checking for ticket validation. I bought the 72 hours travel pass so I wouldn't accidentally forget to validate the ticket. It's unfortunate and really gives negative impression of the city the way they target and harass tourists and try to make money from them through simple errors and lack of awareness. The random ticket inspectors in my experience only checked tourists and never residents of the city. I bought the 48 hours travel pass in Vienna but never once did I see ticket inspectors and I rode the trains and buses everywhere in Vienna. Based on my experience and others I've read, you can actually get by in Vienna and not buy metro tickets and ride for free because they practically never check. And Vienna metro, tram, and buses are far nicer and even better connected than Budapest.
We took the Railjet train from Budapest to Vienna. It was short less than 3 hours easy train ride. I was able to grab the discounted 13 and 19 Euro tickets by booking 2 months in advance. Vienna was bit of shock in price after being used to cheap Budapest prices. Prices on goods and services were generally about par with US prices. Vienna is like the cleaner and nicer version of Budapest as far as architecture. Buildings are maintained better and it's like they pressure washed everything and fixed the broken bricks and concrete. The city has mature and reserved feel to it. Vienna definitely feels like old money with lot of rich people. People were really friendly and helpful but in a way, I felt like I was in Germany with all the German influences.
We stayed at Hotel Kaiserhof Wien in Vienna and I highly recommend this hotel. I think I paid around $235 a night for three of us and that included fabulous and tasty buffet breakfast. I would easily value the quality of the breakfast as $30-50 per person if eaten outside the hotel. And we ate enough at breakfast where we could skip lunch while sightseeing and not be hungry until dinner time. Sometimes, I question TripAdvisor paid rankings and reviews. This time they got it right and it 100% deserved the #2 ranking of top hotels in Vienna.
We spent 2 nights in Vienna and I feel like we covered and saw majority of the big tourist sites. We had two nice Austrian style dinners. I think I prefer Austrian style food over Hungarian but both are great. Both cuisines are meat heavy and make good use of pickle spice and fermented veggies but Austrian seem to do it just slightly better. Or maybe I was just really hungry during dinner after skipping lunch sightseeing. I ate constantly while in Budapest since it was so cheap and it was easy to find food even late at midnight.
I'm 100% going back to Budapest. And I would even entertain the idea of buying property or apartment in Budapest.