Hotel Vital Zalakaros

... must cost an
absolute fortune! You step inside just about any building wearing a
jumper and jacket, and within around 60 seconds you have sweat pouring
from your forehead - it's crazy! Concepts of energy efficiency
definitely haven't reached here yet!

... seems to do the trick.

Short of anything more going wrong with my trip back to Budapest -
after a short train ride from Keszthely, I discovered the connecting
train to Budapest is either running really late, not running
altogether, or has crashed somewhere, and so I am therefore forced to
wait in this 1-horsse town with no horse an extra hour for the next
train - I'll be in Budapest tonight and Ben Gurion Airport by lunch
time tomorrow.

... a sign telling me that before hand...



This place was pretty cool. In the pavilion in the middle of the lake
people were relaxing on sun-chairs like it was the middle of summer.
Funnily enough all the outdoor sundecks were totally empty! You could
immerse yourself in the lake from within the pavilion, or take a step
outside and go in from there (and then swim between the two areas). The
lake is quite deep and they have built various things around the lake ...

I arrived at Keszthely feeling knackered, we couldn't find a campsite and endured a 2+km walk (with packs!!) away from the train station, until we were guided in the right direction. I spent the afternoon sleeping whilst LP went to the baths in the neighbouring town of Heviz.

In the evening we walked into town and were a little ...

... Hungarian words; Nem ėrtem (I don’t understand) and ėrtem (I understand), Küsunum (Thank you).

As I am typing this story now, I really feel I want to do things for me, without the pressure of still finishing the van, organizing things in the van. I am here, and it is a great feeling! Hello world! India here we come!

p.s. by now, we have visited Budapest and are in Eger, see our route....but no time to upload this story until now.

... Very beautiful background!
We were a litlle bit worried because some hungarian people had told us that towns around Balaton were very expensive, so we thought we'd find prohibitive prices, and I suppose that's true for hungarian standard of living, but for western european people this area is quite cheap. As spaniards, we found Keszthely was a quite cheap place!

July 27
We sleep till late and ...

... had a pool, so we all went for a swim, and then had a dinner and into bed... a fairly uneventful day, but one that was needed as the kids were starting to get a little tired.

The next day we had some big plans to follow Adam's advice and get out onto the shores of Lake Balaton, however Mother Nature decided it was time to do some gardening, and threw out a massive storm into Hungary, which put paid to even leaving ...

... pot holes and crumbling asphalt. On the bright side, Chrissy's fruit seeking eagle eyes spotted us lots of cherries and mulberries in the trees. We found many cherry trees with fruit quality of the grocery store. It certainly brightened a monotonous day.

So we're approaching Lake Balaton where we were going to camp when we heard some traditional hungarian whip cracking taking place at this ...

... exploring until the rain came again! We drove to Tihany, a nature reserve, on Lake Balaton, which felt like the sea because it is such a large lake. We sat in our van watching the waves crashing! It brought back memories of day trips to "Walton on the Naze". The bad weather was here to stay, so there was nothing else to do but head for Budapest. At least there are museums to keep dry in.

... whisked around in a whirl pool, sitting under waterfalls, sitting/standing on spa nozzles and one massage to boot. A great days entertainment. Stayed 2 nights in Gyor at another university dorm, with another **** shower. From Gyor we headed to Sporon, another pretty little town - there seems to be an abundance of them. After arriving we were soon to find out that it wasn't the easiest to find accommodation (due to the long weekend) and the people working ...