Hungary

Budapest punches well above its price. Thermal baths sit on top of the city, ruin bars fill former tenements, and the Danube splits hilly Buda from flat, grand Pest. It's a long-weekend city that rewards a week. Add Lake Balaton in summer and Eger's wine cellars, and Hungary stretches further than most realise.

Budapest days fall into an easy loop: a morning soak at Széchenyi or Gellért, a heavy lunch — goulash, lángos, chicken paprikash — then walk it off along the Danube and up to Fisherman's Bastion before the ruin bars open. Most sights cluster within a few tram stops of the river. Your money stretches: the splurges here are spa treatments, a night at the Opera, and dinners that would cost double across the border in Vienna.

The honest part: the Jewish Quarter at midnight is a stag-party corridor, and Szimpla Kert is now more attraction than discovery. The food is heavy, and vegetarians will have to work for it. Outside Budapest, English thins out fast and the towns are pleasant rather than essential — for most visitors this is a one-city country. But that one city is genuinely great, and at these prices you can do it properly: the good seats, the long dinners, the private bath.