Hungary

17 May - Day 63

After a 4 hour drive yesterday, we arrived in the resort village of Keszthely on Lake Balaton in Hungary. We stayed in that evening, checking emails, facebooking and doing onward hotel bookings.

Hungary's highways are excellent and have few cars. There is no indication of what the speed limit is (though I found out later it was 130km/h). I was getting passed a lot. The Hungarian language is frugal on vowels, so all the road signs read like your opticians eye chart. Which leads me to wonder if Hungarian eye charts are composed of vowels only.

The toll system here is different again. You buy an electronic vignette online by registering the car number plate. The highway signs claims that cars are monitored by video. So if the video spots your car on the highway without your plates preregistered you'd be pesumably receiving a fine. I don't quite buy it, sounds good in theory, but too many points of failure in practice, but at 10.70 euros for 10 days, I am more than happy to make a contribution.

After breakfast we visited Castle Keszthely which must be done via a guided tour in Hungarian. It was a newish castle, so it does not stack up too well against what we have seen in France and Spain.

Still, we both liked the library....

 

and some of the contents.

 

They made us wear these felt slippers over our shoes, either to protect the floors, or protect our shoes (I strongly suspect the former). None of the paintings of the former tenants showed their feet, so I can't tell if they had to wear these felt slippers too.

After that we went down to the lake, it was too windy to stick around for too long. We then drove to the nearby town of Heviz. It is a spa town with lots of elderly tourists there to take their health dips, water aerobics and mud baths. It was too touristy for us, so we decided to do groceries and then lunch.

I had an interesting grilled carp, and Marcus, a roast turkey. Costs in Hungary is roughly half the costs in Italy ie food, drinks, accomodation, transport.

 

18 May - Day 64

We arrived in Budapest after a sunny and warm 2 hour drive. We were too early to check in, so I found a car park in the city and we walked to the Danube river.

After doing a circuit, we had lunch in one of the parks, when Tibor our apartment manager rang to say we can check in when we are ready.

 

On the way back to the car, we found the main tourist street Vaci Uta.

 

Later that evening, we took the bus and metro back into the city to the only self service laundromat. While the clothes were drying, we went across the street for some dinner, Hungarian stew for me and grilled salmon for Marcus. At 8pm, a live all women band started playing jazz covers in English. Apartment, laundromat and restaurant were all English speaking. I can now name 3 beers in Hungarian.