Summertime In Hungary At Lake Balaton!

Hello everyone! We are writing from Budapest, the capital of Hungary. Before getting here, we spent ten days in Siofok, one of the main cities around Lake Balaton in Hungary. Lake Balaton is Europe’s biggest and shallowest body of water, and is the main beach destination for those living in Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Poland. It definitely is off the beaten track for people outside of Central Europe. People were usually surprised to hear that Paola was from Peru. Apparently, they don’t get many visitors from that part of the world.

Lake Balaton is quite big—it takes about an hour or more to drive along one side of it at 70 mph. Many of the “beaches” are grassy areas along promenades where they’ve built a bunch of steps going into the water. There are also “private” beaches that charge a very cheap entrance fee and have put in small sandy beaches leading into the water. The lake itself has a sandy bottom and was quite warm and shallow.

Once again, we stayed in a lovely Airbnb that had a great fully enclosed garden and a nice living space. The kids enjoyed the indoor-outdoor living and we enjoyed the flexibility and freedom it gave all of us. Our hosts were very kind too. On the first day, we asked about whether there was a washing machine in the apartment. They said there wasn’t but, on the next day, our host installed one in our bathroom!

Our apartment was located about a mile walk from one of the beaches but, unfortunately, it wasn’t a sandy beach so we only went there for afternoon walks and to enjoy the awesome playground that was there. Instead of going to that beach, we drove 20 minutes to Balatonlelle, a nice sandy beach club with a $1.50 entrance fee that had all the services and amenities you could need while at the beach, including a bar that sold big beers for about $1.50!

Lake Balaton was super fun! Once we figured out what beach to go to, we had a blast. The kids could both go into the water without us having to worry about it. There was not tide and the lake was very shallow so they could actually go in quite a bit before even needing to hold a hand. The temperature of the lake was very nice, especially because we had warm summer days. You could even go in when it was cloudy and be comfortable.

You can tell Hungarians know how to have a good time at the beach. Families and groups of people arrived with tents, blankets, toys, beers, and inflatables of all sizes. We don’t think we’ve ever seen so many inflatables in one place in our lives! There were unicorns bigger than a 4-year old, crocodiles that were the size of the real animals, and lots of inflatable beds to use as sunning beds and floating devices. In the lake at Balatonlelle there were three basketball hoops and two soccer goals that were always being used. Inside the beach club there were several restaurants, a couple of beach bars, umbrellas and beach chairs for rent, inflatables for sale, playgrounds, grassy areas and a shallow children’s pool as well. And everywhere we went there were boats for hire, like paddle boats, kayaks, boats with slides, stand-up paddleboards, and windsurfing boards.

Overall, the atmosphere was very family friendly and laid back. One thing that was neat to see was the multi-generational families. A lot of families also included grandparents, who were usually having the most fun in the water with the young kids!

In addition to going to the beach almost every day, these are some of the other things we did during our time at Lake Balaton:

• On an overcast day, we took a car ferry from our side of the lake to the town of Tihany, a small medieval town that sits on a peninsula that sticks about 4km into the lake. The main tourist draws of the town are its Benedictine abbey and a lavender museum. We visited both and really enjoyed them. The lavender museum was a great place for kids. On the outside grounds they had a fun climbing structure and a maze. Next to this “playground” was a boardwalk through wetlands where you could do some bird watching. In fact, the area surrounding Tihany is a protected nature area and it’s supposed to have a very rich variety of birds. The inside of the museum was also fun and perfect for our kids’ ages (Hugo is now 4.5 and Valentina is almost 22 months).

• We went to a street music festival in Veszprem, a town located 45 minutes north of Siofok. It was super fun, with music all over the old town—six stages had been set up and there were musicians playing on the streets apart from the stages. The festival was free and lasted for five days. Apparently every night it goes until the morning light. We, of course, did not make it that long, but the kids stayed up late and had a great time enjoying everything from folk to blues to some fairly wacky alternative to heavy rock.

• We visited an “adventure park” twice. From what we read, these are quite a thing in Hungary. They are what we would call ropes courses, with obstacles and zip lines and the like, where you are strapped in with a harness to a guide line. The park we went to (Zamardi Kalandpark) had three different courses: one for kids, one for “juniors,” and one for adults. Hugo loved it so much we went twice! Wearing a harness and helmet, Hugo walked on ropes, climbed through dangling tunnels, and climbed across suspended climbing walls. He even went on a zip line! There was also a real steam train that ran through the park that both kids loved. We also all enjoyed a wooden maze/obstacle course there!

We had originally planned on going to the small town of Nagymaros, Hungary after our stay in Lake Balaton. Unfortunately, after we arrived to our apartment, we were shocked with the poor condition of the place and decided to head back to Budapest. But, don’t worry! After we spent an uncomfortable night there, we left and reported our issue to Airbnb and we were fully refunded for our failed stay in Nagymaros (it helped that we documented with photos the mold, boarded windows, and incredible numbers of spiders). And before heading back to Budapest, we visited the fortress of Visegrad, which we were all very excited to see. So it all worked out!