photograph courtesy of Sean Kirkham

The easiest way to acclimate yourself to Budapest is to hop on a guided tour bus navigating its way through the streets, passing historical landmarks and other points of interest at thirty-five kilometers an hour while an energetic tour guide explains the significance of this or that spot. Program Centrum Tours offers a two-hour tour along these lines for €20.

Absolute Tours also offers a night stroll for around €17.50 (slightly less for students). Towards the end of this friendly Absolute tour, you’ll find yourself rather tipsy from visits to the local wine cellars along the route.

Julia Lengyel (smiling above) offers an altogether different perspective on Budapest. With a degree in History of Culture in Europe, she works for a local travel agency as chief tourist guide and also escorts English-speaking groups throughout central Europe. She provides visitors with a more intimate view of Budapest, mesmerizing her audiences with enchanting stories and local lore. She takes her tours off the beaten track to fascinating nooks and corners of Budapest.

Julia can be contacted by email and by telephone at +36 1 353-3913.

Popularity: 8% [?]

photograph courtesy of mitue

This month’s Travel and Leisure has a perfectly serviceable (har) round-up of Berlin, with one hotel recommendation stand-out in particular. The Hotel Riehmers Hofgarten takes up space in an unassuming 19th century building in a leafy part of Kreuzberg. Rooms are airy, with big windows overlooking the street, and there’s even a (very tiny) parking garage for guests. It’s a little business-like—and, frankly, beyond the Cheapo budget—but worth keeping in mind as a splurge.

Kreuzberg is positioning itself as a nice alternative to Mitte—itself closing in on “over” status thanks to the recent purchase of a flat there by none other than Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Stick with Kreuzberg and places like the Riehmers Hofgarten, which stakes out some comfortable middle ground between Cheapo and luxe.

Popularity: 4% [?]

photograph courtesy of wync

Here at EuroCheapo, we are big ol’ book nerds. We spend most weekends browsing bookstore shelves, lingering in libraries, and reading the coveted New York Times Book Review cover to cover.

Were we on Helen Mirren’s (Long live the Queen!) home turf right now, we’d be hitting up Jewish Book Week in London. For six glorious days, writers like Martin Amis, Saul Bellow, and Eva Hoffman descend on The Royal National Hotel for fireside-style chats and workshops that will leave you feeling anything but verklempt.

Ever wanted to bend Nora Ephron’s ear? Look no further! Nora takes the stage on March 3rd in one of the many book panels featured this year. The fest also boasts reading groups and a class on writing crime novels. This year also marks the first masterclass in translating the Bible. Too bad we missed that day in Sunday school.

Popularity: 3% [?]

photograph courtesy of easyBus

Europe String beat us to the bus—the easyBus, that is.

EasyBus is the 600,000th component of Stelios Haji Ioannou’s easy.com empire. Or at least that’s how it seems. EasyBus is a transfer service currently running between central London and Luton. In June, easyBus will add Stansted to its as yet quite small network. Fares begin at £2 for tickets booked online; walk-up London-Luton fares begin at £8; walk-up London-Stansted fares begin at £7.

We’d love to see easyBus enter markets with poor and slow transportation links between airport and city center—especially in cities where extortionate taxi drivers rule the transfer roost. Consider the preceding sentence an open suggestion, Stelios.

Popularity: 4% [?]

photograph courtesy of Directions_to_Orthodoxy

Vatican commandos began their pilgrimage to the soccer fields surrounding St. Peter’s Basilica Saturday for the first match of the Clericus Cup. The tournament is host to 16 different teams from Catholic institutes around Rome. The first match, between Mater Ecclesiae and Gregorian University, attracted an international crowd, signage depicting the Virgin Mary, and inspirational chants.

The Cup shall runneth over through June, giving fans of all denominations plenty of time to catch a match before (and after!) Sunday mass.

Amen, right?

Popularity: 4% [?]

Following our Sunday night Oscars soirée we only yesterday got down to sorting through our weekend media infusion. We found a cocktail-painted Sunday’s Times’ Travel Section—predictions scribbled across the front page—under the sofa.

We apologize for our tardy digest. These travel section features had us particularly interested:

Travel by rail in Europe is set to get easier
Rail travel will soon be faster between certain cities, including London-Paris (2 hours, 15 minutes), and Paris-Strasbourg (2 hours, 20 minutes).

Street theater at the pull of a curtain
Some suggestions for landing hotel rooms with the most intoxicating views in Rome, Paris, Vienna, New York, and Tokyo. These ain’t Cheapo rooms, be forewarned…

Lower-priced rooms, with boutique style
Now we’re talkin’, peeps. Hotels catering to younger business travelers are getting smarter designs and lower rates. Focused on US destinations.

Q&A Getting Compensation for Lost Luggage
Who’s responsible when your baggage is picked up by the wrong passenger? Yikes.

And then there were lots of stories about cruises…

Popularity: 2% [?]

Athens is an immensely walkable city. Still, should you decide you want to ride—or should Mother Nature not be as accommodating to your desires as you’d like—you’ll do well to check out bus #400, OASA’s (the public bus system’s) “sightseeing line.”

You can buy your ticket for €5 on the bus itself. Your ticket will be good for 24 hours, so you can get on and off the bus wherever you like. You can even start your tour on one afternoon and continue it the following morning if you find yourself shifting into “chilling-for-five-hours-at-a-local-café-and-then-heading-to-the-taverna” mode. We’ve been there.

The bus makes stops at many popular sites and cruises through neighborhoods of greatest interest to most tourists, including the National Archaeological Museum, Monastiraki, the Benaki Museum, and Plaka. No, there is no Vince Vaughn character on the bus offering funny asides about the city’s history and people, but bus #400 provides easy and inexpensive access to places you’ll want to go.

Popularity: 5% [?]

photograph courtesy of hudson_jeremy

Normally we don’t like to take our cues from press releases, but the Visit-Montenegro.com Newsletter we just received has us excited for Europe’s newest country.

Independent now for under year, Montenegro boasts truly stunning coastline, beguiling mountain terrain, and the amazingly deep Kotor fjord (see above). It’s also—as of yet—very cheap.

Since independence, it’s become an obvious place to invest. There are plans to turn a former military shipbuilding yard in Tivat into a luxury marina, and the Aman Resorts group is leasing three resort properties—in Budva, Milocer, and Sveti Stefan.

On the budget-friendly side, we’ve been noticing package holidays to Montenegro originating in northern Europe. We’re just waiting for forward-thinking budget air carriers to start adding destinations like Podgorica and Tivat to their route maps.

Popularity: 2% [?]

photograph courtesy of plumilla

In Berlin’s hip Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood, sometimes it seems a sight easier to pick up cheap Asian food than to actually find a traditional German restaurant. But when the result is great sushi for half the price, who are we to complain?

Tabeyo Sushi-Bar, close to café- and bar-lined Lychenerstrasse and the Kulturbrauerei entertainment complex, offers 50 percent off sushi all the time, and what that means to raw-fish lovers is basic sushi rolls (6 pieces) for less than €2, inside-out and special rolls for less than €6 and nigiri for a measly €1. You might well ask if there is something fishy going on here, but the quality at Tabeyo is anything but cut-rate, with dishes expertly prepared using the freshest ingredients.

We started with pots of warming green tea and delicious miso soup, thick with green onions, seaweed and silky-smooth chunks of tofu, before moving on to the main event of spicy tuna and salmon rolls. We washed it all down with cold Sapporos and were delighted when the bill came to just over €10 per person.

The ambiance comes for free. The small restaurant was recently renovated, and the low-lit, black-and-red interior offers a warm, quiet retreat; even the random fake palm trees and a giant plastic fish on the wall don’t disrupt the mood.

Tabeyo is located at Danziger Strasse 14 and stays open until midnight every night.

Popularity: 5% [?]

photograph courtesy of Xavi_Calvo 

A fellow Cheapo wrote us recently with this question:

“I’ve heard about these cheap flights (like $10 to fly from London to Florence!) that you can get around Europe. Your site seems really enthusiastic about these airlines, but a friend told me that you can only book them from Europe and you have to be European in order to fly them. Is this true?”

Sarah H, Ohio.

Thanks for you email, Sarah. Your friend obviously cares for you and is eager to help out with your travel plans. He or she is also dead wrong.

With very few exceptions, flights on European budget airlines (including industry leaders like easyJet, Germanwings, Ryanair, and Sky Europe) may be purchased by anyone using a credit card. The ability to purchase a flight is not restricted by nationality or location of purchase—after all, you’re booking these tickets over the Internet.

One of the best things about ticketless, budget airlines is that, in most respects, they’ve made buying and flying easier than ever. So fly, fly, fly, Sarah!

Popularity: 3% [?]