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Steve and Emma's Travel Tales

Kicking on to Keszthely

Hungary | Wednesday, February 22, 2023 | 27 photos

We hopped on a bus from Balatonfured and were soon being dropped off in Keszethely, a larger town on the southern end of the lake. We were staying in the old town which is a 20 minute walk from the lake shore and had a wonderful apartment for our 3 day stay. We planned to use the town as a base to explore the area. It turns out that Keszthely is a lovely old town with a large square and plenty of old fancy buildings, the fanciest being the Festetics Palace. It turns out that the place was almost deserted and hardly any of the restaurants were open. I imagine it would be rammed in summer but this suited us.We spent the first afternoon wandering around and luckily we found John's Pub which was not only open but served fantastic food and had a lovely Hungarian white wine on their list. White wine in Eastern Europe is usually on the sweet side for us, but Bujdoso Kapitany was delicious and became our favourite. The grape is Irsai Oliver, so we were look out for that in the future. The next day we went back to the bus station and travelled to the village of Szigliget, which was a mouth full to say to the bus driver. We had come to visit the old fortress and it was brilliant, nicely restored, the right amount of information in English and cracking views of the lake and the countryside. We spent quite a while wandering the ruins and finding out the history before strolling around the old village. Our final day in Keszthely and the weather was set to be fine so we headed out for a hike. After a trudge to the edge of town we were then on a jeep track in the forest enjoying the sunshine and the solitude. We wer aiming for the village of Vallus but there were many well signed trails so a haven for hikers like us. At Vallus we headed up a steep incline to find an observation post. The views as you would expect were great and we enjoyed a well deserved rest and ate our picnic. From there we trekked along a ridge and then back down towards the lake at Balatongyork. Amazingly we found a lakeside restaurant open and we enjoyed a cold Dreher as reward for our 25km walk. We jumped on the tiny local train back to town and all in all we loved our time in Keszthely.


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