Yup, that is how sick I was last week. Thankfully, it only ended up lasting about a day, but what a day it was. Marta and Istvan think that I may have picked up a virus while at one of the baths; no more saunas for me! So we lost most of a day in sight-seeing (I tried to get through the first half pretending to be healthier than I was) and got to see the inside of a Hungarian clinic. Well, the waiting room part anyway. The emphasis is certainly on the waiting. Early on in the waiting I used the WC for some unpleasant backwards digestion, and then, as my mother always maintained that a person would, I began to slowly feel better. After quite a bit more waiting we decided tracking down some ginger ale and rice cakes seemed like a better use of our time so we left without ever getting past the waiting room area (though I should mention that we went to three separate buildings before finding one to treat a foreigner). Can you believe that they sell Canada Dry in Hungary? What a happy surprise!
Moving on to more pleasant subjects...
On Wednesday we rented a car and drove ourselves to Lake Balaton. It is about 100km southwest of Budapest and the largest freshwater lake in Europe I beleive. Last time we stayed in Balatonalmadi near the NE end of the lake, but this time we drove the length of the lake (70km) and stayed closer to the NW end. We chose the Badascony (Ba-da-choin) area and decided to try to stay right in the town of Badascony. We stopped at the tourist info to ask about room availability, but they told us we weere out of luck and should go to the next town. Instead we went to another Tour Inform place and in the end stayed two doors down from the first tourist info place!
Our bed & breakfast was clean, roomy, air conditioned, and at an excellent location for 10500 Forints a night (about $60 CDN). We could walk about a block to the main street and within 4 minutes be at the beach. We were also well situated for driving to other interesting things to see. The first afternoon was a bit cooler (27°C) so we drove to the spa lake town of Heviz (HAY-vees). This small but deep lake has a spring coming up through its peat bottom which heats the entire lake to about 32°C and infuses the water with minerals. Soaking in here is supposed to give a person relief from all kinds of pains and problems, but to do that you need to rent a tube because it is far too deep to lounge around the edges like a regular lake. Even though it is filled with minerals the water is very clear and we felt exceptionally bouyant while in there.
The next morning we went to explore a castle which we had spotted on our way to Heviz. We first drove to the town of Szigliget and then hiked up to its castle ruins. It was quite a view and we took a lot of pictures to be posted later. In the afternoon we lounged at the Badascony beach. The next moring we drove just up behind our town to the Natinal park area at the top of the hill. There was a hiking trail which took us up to a ˝panoramic view˝ tower which the surrounding trees had grown taller than! Thankfully there were better viewpoints along the way and it was a lovely walk through the woods. In the afternoon, once again, we lounged by the lake. This morning, we headed back to Budapest detouring down the Tihany Peninsula and shaking our heads at the bumper to bumper traffic headed to Lake Balaton for the weekend. So glad we went during the week!
No comments:
Post a Comment