The MÁV-START Railway Passenger Transport Co. (MÁV-Start) offers a special night train opportunity from Budapest to Venice. The train departures from the Keleti Pályaudvar (Eastern Railway Station) of Budapest around 5 pm and after a smooth night sleeping on the train you will arrive to Venice next morning around 7 am.

Last March, I have just tried this train with Zannnie and for a couple, the double bed ticket costed about 79 EURO/persons. If we consider that we arrange the travel costs and the accommodation with one single ticket, it is quite a reasonable price. The train comes back in the evening at 9.20pm, so it is possible to organize an extra fast "jump" to Venice, spending there an entire day for some impressions and coming back in the evening.

We would rather recommend you to spend at least one night in Venice, in a hotel, hostel or in any other kind of accommodations. Such way, you still can manage a two days/three nights visit at a reasonable price.

I wouldn't say that everything is perfect on the night train, there is still a lot to improve but in general we had a safe and cool trip to Italy. To me personally, it was definitely more fun than flying. 

We have created short video about the train-trip for you:

The other nearby city you can explore from Budapest is to Vienna, Austria.