Košice Good value
Prices here are lower than in Bratislava for the same meal. Halušky, lokše and soups thick enough to be dinner are the things to order. The terraces on Hlavná charge for the view of the cathedral; one street off, they do not.
Budget travel in Slovakia
What a visitor's money does in Slovakia: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.
Good value average across 5 guides · 5 is very cheap
Money
Euro (EUR) · 1 EUR = 1.13 USD · 1 EUR = 0.85 GBP
Euro, so there is nothing to change. Cards are taken almost everywhere. The one trap is the card machine or ATM that offers to charge you in your home currency: refuse it.
ATMs
Avoid: Euronet, any machine offering to charge you in your home currency
Use: Slovenská sporiteľňa, VÚB, Tatra banka, ČSOB
Euronet is the machine on the old town’s corners. The bank machines are a few streets away and do not push a conversion.
Getting around
A short ride in Bratislava: €5–10 across town in Bratislava — middling
Usually cheaper than a street taxi, and the price is fixed before you get in.
City by city, cheapest first
Banská Štiavnica Good value
Slovak and hearty — halušky, kapustnica, game in season. In a town this small, book dinner on a summer weekend.
Spiš Good value
Plain Slovak cooking — halušky, kapustnica, pork with dumplings — at prices well under Bratislava’s. Levoča’s square has the restaurants; the villages have very few.
Bratislava Good value
Bryndzové halušky — potato dumplings with sheep’s cheese and bacon — is the national dish and is best in a plain place rather than a themed one. The Small Carpathians start at the city edge, so the wine on the list is local and worth ordering.
High Tatras Good value
Hut food is the point: soup, halušky and tea with rum, carried up by porters. Down in the resorts the food is hotel food. Bryndzové halušky and kapustnica, the sauerkraut soup, are what to order anywhere.
The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.
The guides in Slovakia
BratislavaSlovakiaA small old town under a square castle, an hour from Vienna, and a flying saucer on the bridge
High TatrasSlovakiaThe smallest high mountains in Europe, strung along an electric railway, with huts you walk to and summits you mostly cannot in winter
KošiceSlovakiaSlovakia’s second city, built along one long main street with the country’s largest cathedral in the middle of it
Banská ŠtiavnicaSlovakiaA silver-mining town built down the inside of an old volcano, with two castles, a calvary on the hill opposite, and lakes the miners dug
SpišSlovakiaOne of the largest castle ruins in Central Europe on a bare hill, and a walled town down the road with the tallest Gothic wooden altar in the world