Sightseeing Around Northern Lake Balaton

We woke up feeling much more rested and ready to go. Had a quick breakfast at the hotel with Penny. They were waiting in for the delivery of her wallet from Budapest that was coming this morning (it came, everything still in it, all such a relief!!).

Our hotel.

We headed off to the Festetics Palace, near Keszthely, is a baroque palace, very much like a small version of Versailles.

The palace’s construction, started by Kristóf Festetics in 1745, lasted more than a century. During this time, the palace, built at first on the foundations of a ruined castle, was tripled in size in two subsequent building campaigns, most recently in the 1880s. The result is one of the three largest country houses in Hungary.

The old town area around it is very attractive. We parked up just outside the gates and entered the Park which is free of charge. There are lovely fountains, woods, shrubberies and seating areas. There are over 20 rooms open to the public and very ornately decorated in the Baroque style. The family were in residence to the end of the Second World War when they fled to Germany. We actually came across the saxaphone player who played at the goulash party, playing in the town centre!

The palace was very busy with a lot of queuing. Would recommend going early in high season. We came out and had a coffee in the town and then drove back to our hotel to pick up Penny and Dave as the courier had arrived.

Then we headed up to Szigliget Castle. Szigliget is a ruin on a hill above a town of the same name on the shore of Lake Balaton.

. The castle was built by the Benedictine Abbey in 1262 and later became royal property. The castle protected the Hungarian border with the Ottoman Empire, experienced many Turkish raids, but none of them was successful. In 1702, it was destroyed by order of Emperor Leopold, and the stones were gradually dismantled by the local inhabitants; It was repaired in 1931, 1953 and 1965–1966. The upper castle with two towers and a palace has dimensions of 75 × 20 meters. During the 15th and 16th centuries, the northern lower castle was built below with dimensions of 75 × 50 meters. It is a double castle, the lower castle with a roundel served as the main fortress. There are two car parks and we recommend you park in the upper one although there is still quite a stiff walk up from there. The views are gorgeous though. It is £4 per person (2000 huf) to enter and only cash is accepted.

After that we went to Lengyel Chapel, high up in the vineyards above Badacsony. An absolutely picture perfect little Baroque church – lovely interior decorations – set in cascades of vines, heavy with black grapes and the blue lake glimmering below. The views were just lovely. The old mansion next door – the main house of the domaine – was absolutely gorgeous too. The chapel was built in 1760 replacing a very much older chapel dedicated to St George. The statuary on the outside of the church bears witness to this. Well worth a trip.

Just about 100 metres down the hill from the chapel is a lovely restaurant and bar called Szászi Birtok Viridárium étterem. It is literally part of a the vineyard and has a fine dining restaurant and a tasting terrace/wine bar. We sat in the wine bar under a canopy of vines, enjoyed the view and I had a lovely cold glass of rose and Bob had a glass of their non alcoholic grape juicee spritzed with soda water. A lovely spot.

That took us to about 3pm and it was boiling so we headed down to the beach at Abrahamhegy, just 4 minutes from our hotel on foot. It isn’t perhaps quite as nice as the one we went to yesterday at Badacsony, but still amazingly equipped and with great facilities. It was really busy by then with holidaymakers but we didn’t care and just wanted to get into the water. Spent a very happy 90 minutes wallowing there.

Now….. did I mention that today was Stuart’s birthday!!!!!! He and Fi had done very similar sights to us today but in a different order. He’d made dinner reservations for us at a fabulous restaurant right up the hill above Badacsony right amongst all the vines. What a fantastic place. Kisfaludy Haz Etterim Kisfaludy-ház Étterem (kisfaludyhaz.hu) is right up the mountain and absolutely surrounded by vineyards and tasting rooms. We could see people on wine tastings walking from vineyard to vineyard, having taxi’d up there in minibuses. The view down to the lake was absolutely drop dead gorgeous. Stunning. Fantastic food, drinks and service for about £30 per person. Definitely on the fine dining side.

We ate on the terrace and pushed the boat out and some of us had three courses and some had two. It was all great food. I started with a smoked trout terrine with caviar and horseradish cream beetroot. Others had goats cheese and salad, goulash soup. For mains I had slow cooked pork cheek with fried potato gnocchi, Bob had veal stew with gnocchi, Stuart and Fi had an amazing shared platter of grilled meats with rice and vegetables, Penny had pork cheeks too, and Dave had schnitzel. Then for dessert, Bob had a sort of shredded pancake in sauce with salted caramel dipping sauce, Penny had a doughnut stuffed with walnut ice cream and served in a chocolate nut sauce and Fi had berry panacotta. We washed it all down with soft drinks, beer, water and 2 bottles of local rose wine. I should mention there is absolutely zero tolerance of any level of alcohol in the blood here if driving so we had 2 diners as usual on soft drinks. Of course we all wished the birthday boy a very happy birthday with lots of toasts!! I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that restaurants seem to close very early in the evening here IF they open past 6 at all! Well, by 9 the restaurant started to close and we were very much alone with the wait staff changed and ready to go by 945…. country hours I guess even in high season.