Budapest to Hollókő

Hollókő is one of the eight Hungarian places listed in the Unesco Heritage list.

How to go there from Budapest? it's really easy:

• Take the Red Metro Line (line  N°2)  until the Stadionok Station.


• Going out from the metro station you just have to walk few meters and take the entrance at the left to the bus station.


• You pay 2160/1080 HUF Adult/Student (7/3,5 Euros) for the ticket.


• You can check the time table here, it's in Hungarian but it is very intuitive to use. Clue: use the hungarian characters in order to get a valid result.

I took the bus at 8:30am on saturday, I did it in March, it was full of snow and a very cold day, but still I enjoyed it. Three or four hours there is MORE than ENOUGH, the place is very small, and the castle as well. It seems going there in Easter is better because the locals use their traditional dresses, and walk around the village, which should be nice in a context of flowers and colors.

What to do there? going up to the castle, enjoy the view, and walk around the village, maybe taking lunch there and that's it. It's a small place, with a nice architecture and nice feeling. I went into a museum to see the houses inside, not big deal, less than an euro for the student ticket, so what you see is proportional to what you pay.

The entrance to the castle is 600/300 HUF Adult/Student (2/1 Euro). The view from the castle is really nice, I was imagining the colours of the hills around during spring or autumn. The place where the castle is located is very interesting.

After Hollókő we decided to move to another town close to it (25 minutes and 150 HUF away), named Szécsény. The Lonely Planet was saying about a castle there, DO NOT expect a castle, is just a small palace. If three or four hours were MORE than ENOUGH in Hollókő, then one or two hours are also MUCH MORE than ENOUGH in Szécsény. Besides the "castle!" there is some kind of tower that is not absolute vertical, because in a bombing in 1944 it moved 3 degrees.

Conclusion: Hollókő is nice, it is worthy to visit it, but as it is too small that it would be good to go to another place close to it, just to take advantage of the trip, we chose Szécsény, is nothing amazing but better that than staying or return to Budapest at the afternoon.