After our amazing roadtrip in Slovenia it was time to board an early morning train to start our journey to Hungary. The train station was an easy 40 minute walk from our accommodation. The train station itself was under renovation, though, so finding the track area took us a few attempts. Those are times where its nice to have such a chill travel companion like Nick, no stress. Everything was in Hungarian, but we managed to find our train no problem. We had a short layover in the middle of nowhere to catch our smaller local train to Tapolca. Arriving in the afternoon, we headed straight to lunch which was amazing kebabs.

The check in process for our hostel was a bit amusing. It was a home that was converted into a hostel (not that unusual). The host did not speak any English and we had to do all communications via her calling the owner. The phone number they had provided us did not work. The owner tried to tell us that electricity, wifi, hot water, toilet paper, bed sheets, etc were all extra fees. We did not fall for that trick, though. Luckily we booked through booking.com which stated that those things were included. We simply told the owner that if there were extra charges they would have to submit those through booking.com. Unsurprisingly those charges never came. I wondered how many tourists just hand over cash for anything they get asked for. I’d assume it must work enough of the time to be worth it to the hostel owner to ask. The hostel was one of the dirtiest we had ever stayed in. To say it gave me the heebie-jeebies is an understatement. After getting bed bugs in Sofia I was so paranoid about getting them again and that place seemed like it would have some serious issue like that. Sometimes I saved us too much money on accommodations and I gotta say this was one of those times.

Tapolca itself was a small town that appeared to get one tourist bus with elderly people a day to do the hits, and was otherwise relatively quiet with people just living their day to day normally. Nick and I walked and saw everything there was to see in a few hours and that was us really taking our time. There was a small park with a nice fountain, some street art, a path that ran along a short creek, and a few cafes. The park had a notably high number of koi fish, which seemed pretty random, and a few gorgeous willow trees. We enjoyed our walking around after a long day riding the trains to get there. We also enjoyed some ice cream, believe it or not.

The highlight for Tapolca, though, was definitely the Lake Cave activity right in the middle of town. Hungary has lots of caves and is apparently a notable cave exploration tourist destination. That was the only cave we did, but it was neat. The activity started in a museum which told us about the history of the cave. After it was discovered it had many uses including as a hospital. It used to be dry and was walked by tourists, but is now flooded. Instead of walking, people paddle small boats through the cave. Online it’ll say it’s a 90 minute activity, but the museum and the paddle took us less than 40 minutes.

The paddling was fun; Nick usually would be the one to do that but they said the front person was the paddler instead of the back and I definitely wasn’t letting Nick sit up front. There were sections that we had to duck our heads down and not use the paddle at all since the ceiling was so low. Nick did not like the parts where it was obvious that the cave was dug out. They had put in small lights in the water which made it a beautiful color. We were happy that not a lot of people were in line for this when we started; we only had one boat behind us. I had read that there are times that the line is several hours long. We did not have to wait longer than 5 minutes. I don’t think it would’ve been worth it if there was a long wait. It was definitely more of a Kajsa activity than a Nick one, but he was a good sport about taking my photo in there.

Overall Tapolca was fine, but if we had to replan that section of our trip it would be much better for just a half day rather than nearly a day and a half. It was a relaxing way to kick off our time in Hungary, though, which was nice because our time in Budapest had many more planned activities!