The highlights, at your pace
Buda Castle, the Parliament, the grand avenues and the river panorama — the essential first look at the city, with stops chosen as we go.
Budapest & Hungary
A private guide
A private guide
who also drives
See Budapest and the country at your own pace, on a route built around what interests you — with one licensed guide planning, driving and telling the story from start to finish.
- Licensed guide since
- 1991 · 35 years
- Languages
- English, Italian, Hungarian
- Group size
- Up to 6 · minibus on request
- Tours from
- Half a day to a week
Why a private guide
The difference is the day you get back
A coach tour shows you the same buildings whether it is your first visit or your fifth. This is the other way round: the day is built for you, and it changes as the day goes.
Your pace, not a timetable
Stay longer where it holds you, skip what does not. No group to wait for, no coach leaving at a fixed hour.
The distances disappear
Budapest’s sights sit far apart. A car stops close to each of them, which saves the walking for the places worth walking.
Beyond the standard circuit
Coaches stop at three or four points downtown. We can go where they cannot, and talk about how people actually live here.
One person, start to finish
The same guide plans the route, drives, and tells the stories. Nothing is handed over, nobody turns up late.
Tours
A starting point, not a catalogue
These are the routes guests ask for most often. Every one of them bends to the people in the car — and if none of them is quite it, that is what the last box is for.
In and around Budapest
Half a day to a full day in the city
The city grew out of three separate towns, so its sights are spread wide. With a car you cover the distance and spend your energy on the places themselves.
Budapest in depth
A full day for the layers most visitors miss: architecture and its stories, the coffee house tradition, market halls, and the everyday city behind the monuments.
Jewish heritage
The synagogues of the old quarter, the history of a community that shaped the city, and the memorials that record what happened to it.
Hidden corners of Buda
The quiet side of the hills: caves, lookout points, Roman remains and neighbourhoods that no coach route reaches.
Day trips
Out of the city and back by evening
Hungary is small enough that a day is genuinely enough to see somewhere new — and be back for dinner in Budapest.
The Danube Bend
Szentendre’s artists’ town, the river where it turns south, and the old royal seats along the way.
Gödöllő Palace
The country home of Empress Elisabeth — Sisi — and the villages and manor houses of the plain around it.
Eger and the northern hills
A baroque town with a Turkish minaret at its edge, a castle that held out against a siege, and the red wine cellars below.
Lake Balaton
The north shore: volcanic hills, vineyards, the abbey at Tihany and the porcelain town of Herend.
Transfers and further afield
Arriving, leaving, or moving on
A transfer does not have to be dead time. On the way to your next city we can stop wherever the route makes it worthwhile.
Airport and hotel transfers
Met at arrivals, taken where you are staying. The same in reverse when you leave, timed with room to spare.
Budapest to Vienna
The drive with a stop in Bratislava or Győr — a city walk and lunch on the way, instead of four hours on a motorway.
Two days to Vienna
The longer version, overnight on the way: along Lake Balaton, or through the Esterházy estates and their palaces.
Further into the region
Prague, Kraków, Transylvania, the Adriatic — routes I have guided for years, arranged as a longer journey.
Something else in mind?
Wine, architecture, the communist decades, family history, a spa afternoon, a concert to catch — tell me what you are after and I will put a route together. Most of my tours started as a question somebody sent from home before they arrived.
Tell me what interests you
Your guide
Artúr Izsák
Born and living in Budapest, a licensed guide in Hungary since 1991 — 35 years of showing people around my own country. I trained as a teacher of English and Italian, and I have spent most of my working life explaining this part of Europe to people who arrived curious.
Before I began driving guests myself, I worked as a tour manager across Central Europe: Vienna, Prague, Bratislava, Kraków, northern Italy and Transylvania, and every country the Danube passes through from Austria to the Black Sea. That range is useful on the day — if the conversation turns to something you did not expect to ask about, we can follow it.
I build the commentary around the person I am talking to, not around a script. And where I can, I like the day to involve more than looking: something local to taste, music worth stopping for, or whatever happens to be going on in the city that week.
The car
A comfortable seven-seat people carrier, air-conditioned, with room for luggage. I normally take four passengers, which leaves everyone space to stretch out on a long drive.
- Up to 4 passengers in full comfort
- Up to 6 when the third row is needed
- Room for luggage, or a folded wheelchair
- Minibus or coach arranged for larger groups
How it works
Three steps, and none of them complicated
-
1
Tell me what draws you here
Your dates, how many of you, and what you are curious about. A rough idea is enough to start from.
-
2
We shape the route together
I suggest what fits the time you have, flag anything worth catching while you are here, and send a price for the plan.
-
3
You travel, I take care of it
Picked up at your hotel, and free to change your mind on the day — the plan is a starting point, not a contract.
Plan your tour
Tell me what you have in mind
Dates, how many of you, and what you are curious about — that is enough to start. I answer personally, usually within a day, with a suggested route and a price for it.
- Phone and WhatsApp
- +36 30 990 9708
- Languages
- English, Italian, Hungarian
- Booking ahead
- Write as early as you can for the high season — spring and early autumn fill up first.