August 13-16 Tomaj Camping – Badacsonytomaj – Lake Balaton, Hungary
We are staying on the north side of the Lake Balaton, the largest lake in Central Europe. It is 77km long, and about 6 km across. We are staying at Tomaj camping, in the town of Badacsonytomaj right on the shores of Lake Balaton. I think it has been the most fun campsite so far. The campsite has a beach with a great playcenter.
We have had a few relaxing days here. We cleaned out our van and organized our equipment. The first day we got here was super hot and the lake was really warm. The water is kinda weird, it is cloudy and there was a really strange spiky seaweed that scratched us a bit.
The next night it rained really hard, a crazy wind blew in and the weather changed. It got much cooler and all the weird spiky plants blew away! We haven’t seen them since. After the rain cleared we went for a hike up in to the nearby mountains.
The mountains around the lake are actually volcanoes, but luckily they are not active any more!
We took an awesome hike up the side of the mountain and found an incredible tower. The tower was beautiful, it was made out of wood and metal and it had a spiral staircase that ran up the inside of the tower.
Once we got to the top it was really windy, we could see most of Lake Balaton and rest of the volcanoes.
They had signs along the hike teaching us about the different types of volcanic rock that we saw along the way, from Basaltic Columns to bubbly volcanic rocks.
We also saw the huge number of grape farms.
This area is one of Hungary’s wine regions. We walked down the other side of the mountain and through the rows of grapes.
As we made our way down you could stop at all of the small wineries and sample their wine. My parents stopped at one small winery and had a glass of wine, we got an ice cream! My dad said it was the best white wine he has had!
This area grows so much fruit- everywhere we look there are apples, peaches, pears, blackberries, grapes, raspberries, plums and many other fruits we don’t even recognize! Right now is it Dinnye season! Watermelon! We stopped for lunch at a local fish restaurant that allowed us to choose the fish we wanted to eat. They cooked it right up for us. The local fish here is called a Zander. It is a pike- perch hybrid that lives in the lower Danube area.
It was delicious!! On Thursday, the weather was beautiful and we went into the local town and got some of their incredible pastries. My mom’s favourite on is the cherry filled turnover – it is so good!!
Then we came home, and had a quick lunch before we headed down to the beach. Dad had promised us that when the weather got nice again we could rent the paddleboat with the waterslide.
It has 4 seats and a flat area in the back where you could sit. Two people at the front had to paddle, we all took turns trying to paddle the boat. Once we got out into the deep water we all tried the waterslide! Even my mom – she only slightly freaked out going down the slide!
We rented the boat for 1 hour and had a great time sliding and jumping off the boat. The only hard part was getting back into the boat the ladder was super tiny!
Another great day!
Cheers to 30 years of an open border, thanks for allowing us the privilege of seeing your beautiful country. It was incredible.
Tomorrow we head to Croatia!
Talk to you again soon!
Mari and Tia
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