Changing trajectory in Tapolca (I don't know why I am so obsessed with alliteration in my titles...)

Tapolca. A place I think would be lovely to visit in good weather.  I say this as what I saw of it yesterday whilst the weather was good, I liked, and today, even though it's rained most of the day I still liked it. In good weather though you would get to enjoy the street cafes and restaurants and as it is, they're mostly shut in this weather. But as it's currently tipping it down, I'm not overly surprised!

So as I mentioned yesterday, getting here involved taking a train from Balatonfured along Lake Balaton and up into Topolca and along the route the scenery was just beautiful. I've included the pictures I took below although they were through the train window so the quality isn't super good.

Tapolca is encircled by 14 cone-shaped hills of basalt rock which means it's in a really picturesque setting. The main things to see here are the thermal pond:

Which was super-clear and had very large fish in it (these were about 2 feet long)

And the cave lake. This is actually the main feature in the town. It starts with a really informative display of how the caves are formed, the creatures you find in them, the formation of stalactites and stalagmites etc. And then you get to row yourself in a boat around the cave lake tunnels. All for the bargain price of 1800HUF/~£5.00 if you have a student card 😊 (although to be fair it only saved me 200HUF - about 60p!)

I was in a boat with two other women, one Hungarian (who having sat in the front seat had the unfortunate task of rowing!) and the other Russian; neither of whom could swim. This isn't such a huge deal as I think you could probably have waded round, it wasn't very deep, but it did lead much laughter and squealing every time the boat wobbled a little! Some of the pictures I took...

(That's the Russian woman in the background!)

Unfortunately the cave lake doesn't have the stalactites and stalagmites, you have to go a bit further through the tunnels to get to the areas that have them. Neither did they have the bats I was hoping to see that live in the caves, but they were still beautiful nonetheless. 

And so with the weather being so bad that's about all I can do right now. As you'll see, the cloud is currently very low...

Which makes any walking in the hills a bit tricky. Unfortunately it's meant to get worse tomorrow so think I'll be sticking close to the Panzio again. Fortunately it does look like it improves at the end of the week when I'm going to be in Heviz where there is another thermal lake so I'll hopefully get to enjoy that in the sun.

After Heviz, I head to Pécs and I've decided that it will be pretty much my last stop in Hungary, other than a couple of stopovers and 2 nights in Debrecen a bit later on. Last night I had a long conversation with a guy staying in the Panzio who advised me not to go to the northeast of Hungary. He was a really interesting chap who works in informatics and has lived all over Europe and the Middle East for his job (I'm hopeless with names so I can't tell you what he told me his name is!). Whilst it is the wine region and I had planned to spend a little time there, he said that crime rates are much higher there than the rest of Hungary and that I should be careful. As you know, I'd been wavering and this swung it for me. So I'm going to go a little off-piste and head north after Pécs and go to Bratislava (with a stopover in Budapest). I heard some really good reports about it from my friend Alison who went there earlier in the year and then from there I'll go to Vienna for a few days. Then I'll head back to Hungary and go to Debrecen (again via a stopover in Budapest) before getting back on track and heading into Romania. I've never been to Austria or Slovakia so this fits with me going to places I've never visited before. I am aware that I may struggle with the language in Austria as my German GCSE listening exam was really difficult and turns out it was because it was Austrian German rather than German German that was being spoken (let's just ignore the fact that it could be more difficult given that it's been over 25 years since I did the exam which may be the bigger obstacle!!).